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Welcome to the latest edition of the Team Rater Competition! The tier this time around will be SM OU. 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 OU 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:
Shoutouts in the room intro of the RMT room and in RMT news
The rates in the final two rounds will count towards the Team Rater badge
The winner will be awarded voice status in the RMT room on PS if they have shown an interest in getting involved.
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.
Mega Charizard X has become better after the Arena Trap ban, with its 3 Attacks set gaining prominance. This set breaks down common balance cores such as CeleSteelaPex, and can punish Mew and fat Grasses. Earthquake hits Toxapex, Tyranitar and Heatran
Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Dazzling Gleam
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
Specs Tapu Koko has good synergy with Charizard Mega X, and pivots on a lot of Grasses to bring Charizard in. Specs HP Ice gains the OHKO upon Defensive Lando-T, and Dazzling Gleam is a strong STAB attack, which hits Dragons and doesnt have immunities.
Mew gives the team a good check to Fighting types like Mega Lopunny and provides Defog support for the team. A more bulky spread was chosen as Zard X checks Tapu Bulu anyway, while extra SpDef helps with Pokemon like Tapu Lele.
Tangrowth (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Knock Off
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Sludge Bomb
Tangrowth is the SpDef pivot of the team and checks Tapu Koko and Ash Greninja. Sludge Bomb gives the team a secondary Tapu Bulu check incase Zard X was weakened of if Stealth Rocks were up, and HP Fire gives the team another way to hit Ferrothorn and Mega Scizor, since I already have Mew for Zygarde.
Latios was my Choice Scarf user, and provided me with good speed control. It also gave me a way to cripple Calm Mind sweepers like non Z move Reuniculus with Trick, and Surf hits Heatran which was annoying otherwise.
Landorus-Therian @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 24 SpD / 16 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- U-turn
Landorus T provides me with Stealth Rocks and a check to opposing offensive Landorus-T. Helmet was used to spread passive damage since I had other durable Pokemon, and Landorus-T also provides me with a Electric immunity.
Sorry about being super late on this, but I have the top 3 rates from round 1 and the round summary, which I'll post shortly after this. Keep in mind the following are in no particular order:
tigers jaw submitted an excellent rate, in which he started off by discussing the team's issues, including threats to the team and flaws within the team itself. He began by adding Ash Greninja to help improve the team's offensive nature, as it benefits from Hoopa breaking most walls and can support Hoopa through Spikes. Next he removes Tapu Bulu for Ferrothorn, which helps patch up the team's large weakness to Tapu Koko. Finally, he re-added a choice scarf user in Latios to the team, and was able to use it to not only handle some threats Toxapex handled, but allow Mega Scizor to run a more offensive set to improve the team's offensive potential.
hoopa-u (or any really strong breaker) paired with a pokemon notorious for generating free switches via u-turn is an infamous combination, and a decent basis to start a team with, so that's something to work with and maintain. unfortunately though, this team has a plethora of flaws and problematic matchups vs. relevant metagame threats; primarily, but not limited to: mega pinsir, tapu lele, shift gear magearna, choice specs koko, mega medicham, toxapex, an inability to properly capitalise on hoopa-u's breaking prowess thanks to the lack of any clear win-condition, a dependancy on (what i believe to be) an ineffective hoopa-u set for the job at hand of breaking common balance cores, and the lack of real offensive presence to maintain a decent match-up vs. offensive teams. this can only be remedied with quite dramatic alterations to the team, if one is to keep the idea of mega-scizor baiting in targets for hoopa-u to pummel, and the finished product will still be slightly flawed if you're to keep hoopa-u on the team.
major changes
->
the first major change i'd recommend is to remove scarf protean greninja and replace it with waterium-z battle bond greninja. this brings a pokemon to take advantage of hoopa-u breaking down it's most common checks such as toxapex, tangrowth, assault vest magearna, ferrothorn, and mega venusaur. it also provides spikes support for itself and mega-scizor, which can ease pressure off of hoopa-u when it comes to breaking balances. waterium-z seems like a substandard choice compared to specs until you consider the benefits of bluffing specs and how much it aids in getting layers up and activating battle bond with an accurate nuke move. furthermore, it acts as a way to provide fast, immediate offensive presence, which was desperately needed before.
->
the next significant change i'd go for is to replace tapu bulu with standard ferrothorn. this brings a secondary steel-type to act as a buffer vs tapu lele, which previously decimated this team, and better tapu koko check, as bulu is shaky to say the least considering specs dazzling gleam and hidden power ice (both of which were relatively free moves to go for vs the other members of the team forced out by tapu koko) easily 2hko tapu bulu. it also frees up a slot on landorus by running stealth rock.
->
the third and final major alteration to the team that i'd suggest would be to replace toxapex with choice scarf latios. with the removal of choice scarf greninja, another means of speed control became a necessity, and latios does this just fine. it retains a check to the declining charizard-y and keldeo, albeit nowhere near to the level that toxapex did, but most importantly it can run defog, freeing up and incredibly important slot on mega-scizor. furthermore, it adds just a little more offensive presence to the team, along with ash greninja.
minor changes
whilst play-testing the team i found that hoopa-u was underperforming at it's given role, mainly because it was locked into a move and the opponent could simply pivot through with the likes of tangrowth and toxapex, then switch into a resist, so i'd suggest running a mixed life orb set as opposed to choice band. this improves hoopa-u's ability to break down slower and fatter teams in comparison to choice band thanks to its ability to switch up moves and overall makes it far less prediction reliant. furthermore, it prevents the rising tyranitar from pursuit-trapping you.
with latios on the team taking on the role of hazard remover, scizor is now free to run swords dance instead of defog. this is something that i think is needed on a team with mega-scizor paired with a breaker such as hoopa-u, as you can then properly capitalise off of the relationship between the two in the late-game. an alternative, more specially-defensive spread of 248 hp / 56 def / 148 spd / 56 spe with an impish nature allows scizor to switch in on stealth rock and beat calm mind boltbeam magearna one on one, a threat which previously decimated the team.
with ferrothorn being the stealth rock user of the team, landorus can now run protect as opposed to stealth rock. this allows you to more handily beat opposing zygarde and swords dance z-move landorus-t. furthermore, protect+leftovers is great for scouting vs. choice-locked pokemon, as well as maximising passive recovery and keeping landorus healthy for longer. a spread of 252 hp / 172 def / 64 spd / 20 spe with a relaxed nature outpaces max-speed mega mawile whilst underspeeding most opposing landorus-t, and not cutting into the damage output of hp ice. the spd investment allows landorus-t to switch directly into a moonblast from mega diancie, protect on the next turn, and be out of range of another moonblast, assuming no stealth rocks are on the field, should you need to do that.
~~~~~notes & final thoughts~~~~~
as i went down the route of keeping hoopa-u, there are still issues with the team, but none of which are too crippling and most match-ups have room for manoeuvre should you play intelligently. the most pressing issue would probably be mega pinsir, still, but this can be handled through residual damage from ferrothorn, and hp ice from landorus, then revenge killing with either water shuriken from greninja or bullet punch from scizor. some match-ups have been compromised, whilst more relevant and pressing ones have been strengthened, and the team is now more focused and is more than the sum of its parts.
HQuaze submitted a fantastic rate, which started off by going into detail about major threats to the team. He began his changes by replacing Greninja with Scarf Jirachi to help improve the matchup against Tapu Lele, Magearna and Mega Pinsir. Next, he added Toxic on Toxapex in order to allow it to beat some of the threats it was added to handle including Mega Charizard-Y. Then he added Zen Headbutt on Hoopa-Unbound in order for it to have an easier time KO'ing Mega Venusaur, Toxapex and fighting types including Keldeo. Finally, he added Tangrowth over Tapu Bulu in order to support the team against Tapu Koko and Mega Swampert, which would otherwise trouble the team to a high degree.
at first glance this team looks really solid but giving a better look you can find some really scary threats that this team cannot handle at all
threats
one of the threats is mega pinsir. it just needs one sword dance to break through the whole team.
secondly tapu koko and zapdos can spam electric moves, hp ice and u-turn dealing a lot of damage on everything and the only answers are bulu which gets chipped with hazards and u-turn and scarf ninja, which doesn’t like thunderbolt.
another big threat is magearna which 6-0es the entire team by clicking calm mind and shift gear and cleaning with the electric-ice coverage (although hoopa can take a hit from this stabless-version and punish with fire punch).
i’d also like to mention tapu leleas a threat cuz in this team there isn’t any answer to its psychic-fairy-fire coverage [scarf gren, hoopau and mega scizor aren’t realiable checks].
lastly the rain teams are a pain since the only check tomega swampert is tapu bulu which doesn’t like ice punch at all (it is a garanted 2HKO).
how you can improve your team first of all i’d like go make clear that there is no way to cover all the threats in this metagame. you’ll always have some threats, possibly not common pokemons. so my first suggestion to fix the team is to change scarf ninja to scarf jirachi which covers a lot of weaknesses like tapu lele, magearna and mega pinsir. It can also possibly revenge kill tapu koko. the set is pretty simple: flinching stabs, u-turn and trick which helps a lot against stall and against pokemons like celesteela, chansey, zapdos, suicune... etc.
Jirachi @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- Heart Stamp
- U-turn
- Trick
my second suggestion is to give toxapextoxic over toxic spikes. this will help against mega charizard-x and y and also zapdos. toxic is almost mandatory here because otherways you don’t touch those pokemons at all.
Toxapex @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Haze
- Recover
- Toxic
i’d honestly give the physical psychic stab zenheadbutt on hoopa over either drain punch or fire punch to oneshot toxapex, mega venusaur and fightning type mons in general like opposing keldeos.
Hoopa-Unbound @ Choice Band
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Gunk Shot
- Zen Headbutt
- Fire Punch
last thing you should do is replacing tapu bulu with assaul vested tangrowth. regenerator and some evs in the physical defense are enough to take on both tapu koko and swampert-mega. the moveset is the classic one, giga drain, hp ice earthquaze and knock off. knock helps against the aforementioned celesteela and zapdos. especially against steela.
Tangrowth @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 88 Def / 172 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
now you have a pretty solid defensive backbone having a double regenerator core+ intimidate. you can try rocky helmet landorus which allows you to cheap or punish u-turns and physical attackers like mpunny, mmedicham and mmawile.
Landorus-Therian @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 24 SpD / 16 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power Ice
- U-turn
the team was from beginning rather bulky oriented because you had scizor-m, toxapex, landorus and hoopa. this is why in my opinion the best thing that could have been done is making the team more solid.
Landorus-Therian @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 24 SpD / 16 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- U-turn
Toxapex @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Haze
- Recover
- Toxic
Hoopa-Unbound @ Choice Band
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Gunk Shot
- Zen Headbutt
- Fire Punch
Tangrowth @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 88 Def / 172 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
Jirachi @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- Heart Stamp
- U-turn
- Trick
tl;dr: just look at the red and blue marked part
and yeah thanks for reading, i hope i’ve helped you w/ my rate! :)
Last but not least, we have a great rate from Baloor! Baloor began by discussing threats to the team in detail and started off his changes with the addition of Mew over Toxapex. Similar to tigers jaw above, Baloor was able to open up the potential for Mega Scizor to run Swords Dance over Defog and did just that. Next, he gave 2 options in Tangrowth and Ferrothorn to be run over Tapu Bulu in order for the team to better handle Tapu Koko and Rain offense. As he removed the team's Z move user in the previous change, Baloor changed Lando-T's set to an offensive variant with Z-Fly to help pressure defensive mons alongside Hoopa-Unbound. Finally, he provided a list of threats that could still trouble the team along with some advice on how they could be handled.
Round 1 Original Team:
Hey there stranger, neat team! I am really liking Hoopa-Unow that Arena Trap is gone as it pretty much 2hkos most of the tier without being stopped in its tracks, and with the addition of turners to bring it in as much and safely as possible it truly is a force to be reckoned with! Its really is important to have turners that bring in stuff that Hoopa-U likes to slaughter. I myself, have a team with a similar concept to this. However looking over your team I found a few issues that I wanted to address and hopefully, with some adjustments, we can get the team working to its full potential.
I first noticed that this team is quite threatened by Mega Medicham as it breaks down bulkier teams such as this. Rain teams also seem to be an issue because Toxapex is your real only counter-measure for it and it gets easily tossed byMega Swampert using EQ and threatened out by the electrics that Rain likes to run such as Zapdos and Tapu Koko as Bulu isnt the most reliable answer for electrics. Something that also seems scary for your team to deal with is Shift-Gearna, specifically the Electrium Set. Electrium has a 31.3% chance to OHKO Toxapexfrom full with the assumption that Magearna has yet to gain any Soul-Heart boosts. Mega Pinsiris also scary for your team as your most reliable answer for it is Rocks + BP from Scizor. Finally the team gets easily pressured by offense making some things likeTapu Lele quite scary. Breaking Celesteela and Skarmory also seems quite annoying as you are really reliant on Hoopa-U to do so.
At first this number of weaknesses is intimidating but a lot of these threats share answers! Now onto my suggested changes.
Major Changes:
->
First off I suggest using Mew > Toxapex.What this does for your team is that it allows you to threaten physical attackers such as Mega Medicham by crippling them with will-o-wisp. It also gives you a defogger opening up space on Scizor. I suggest the movesIce Beam/Will-O-Wisp/Defog/Roost with the EV spread of 240 HP/156 Def/ 112 Spe with a Timid Nature. The EV Spread allows you to outrun Zygarde and LandoT so you can act as a check to them w/ Ice Beam.
->
/
For my second big change I am suggesting AV Tangrowth or Spikes Lefties Ferrothorn > Tapu Bulu. For the reasoning that both provide a better check to rain, koko and lele (by switching in then pivoting out accordingly) as well as adding a gren and keldeo check now that we removed Toxapex. Tangrowth is a lot better for longevity while Ferro provides spikes which could help out Hoopa-U in the long run, Ferro is a bit more reliable when dealing with CM SG Mage while Tang deals with just normal SG better because Ferro is scared by Focus Blast. Ferro also scares physical attackers with iron barbs which could provide some much needed chip on things such as Mega Pinsir. Tangrowth would run Giga Drain/Knock Off/HP Fire/Earthquakewith a EV Spread of 252 HP/28 Def/228 SpDef with a Sassy Nature. HP Fire is for Ferrothorn and Scizor. Ferrothorn would run Spikes/Power Whip/Knock Off/Leech Seed with a EV Spread of 252 HP/88 Def/168 SpDef with a Impish Nature.
Minor Changes:
Since we added another defogger I am suggesting Utility Scizor -> SD Scizor. This Scizor would run SD/Bullet Punch/UTurn/Roost and have the EV spread of 248 HP/64 Atk/124 Def/16 SpDef/56 Spe with an Adamant Nature. The 64 Atk evs w/ an adamant nature allows you to get the 2hko on a uninvested Zygarde. It also allows you to kill Koko and Char Y after an SD. The speed on this spread allows you to go before a Mawile Sucker Punch. The rest is put in defenses so you can set up on Bulu and Lando as safely as possible. SD Scizor also threatens Mega Pinsir to an extent with its BP being boosted by SD. Another option for a Scizor spread is 248 HP/4 Atk/240 Def/16 Spe w/ an Adamant Nature. This spread is quite similar to the previous one but the Defensive evs allow it to live a +2 Pinsir return from full as well as to avoid the 2HKO from a band Zygarde after rocks. However I do think the previous option is still better.
Now we need a secondary breaker so I am going to suggest Defensive Lando -> Fly-Z Lando. The set is Earthquake/Fly/Gravity/Stealth Rocks with a EV Spread of 252 Atk/4 Def/252 Spe with an Adamant Nature. Fly Z Lando helps the team break bulky grasses as well as help it break Clefable as its quite scary for Scizor to deal with because it potentially runs Flamethrower. Being faster it threatens out heatran and grounded steels. Gravity helps it kill Celesteela and Skarm which could pose an issue to the team if you need to keep Hoopa-U in the back.
By far the biggest problem, Fire types are now quite a big threat to the team as I got rid of the main fire resist. However there are still forms of counter play. Heatran & Awak are scared out by Hoopa-U and Offensive Landorus. Charizard Y/X are revenge killed by Scarf Gren. Infernape also gets pressured by Scarf Gren and Lando can get the intimidate off which makes it less of an annoyance. Stealth Rocks help with all of these mons.
Fightinum Z can kill off ferro (if you go that route) making it extremely scary for the team to deal with. Though Tang can deal with it alright.
Z Steela is extremely annoying. Your best hopes are to stop it before it sets up with Hoopa-U.
Magnezone traps Scizor & if you went ferro it traps that as well. However it is threatened out by Hoopa-U and Offensive Lando
This thing is still quite annoying even with the addition with SD Scizor & Mew. Getting rocks up vs this thing is quite important. Try to keep scizor healthy as well as try to get the wow off on it w/ mew.
Alright so for the round summary, it'll be a list of good and bad things we noticed from Round 1:
Bolding/Color - we're glad to see everyone put an effort of formatting their rate and making it look nice, but there were multiple instances where there was too many colors and/or people were bolding/coloring way too much. Try to limit what you bold/color to the major changes or threats in your rate.
If you mention a threat/issue/weakness, then cover it or try to make it less troublesome for the team - Had a ton of people mention various threats and then not make a single change to improve the matchup against that threat. If you can't completely cover it, then try and explain how they can attempt to handle it.
Team after the rate - Sometimes the team after a rate would be suddenly weaker to a new threat or a previously mentioned threat and it's important to look back at the team to see if you missed anything. This also applies to making sure to re-add things that are beneficial for every team like Stealth Rocks and Z moves.
Suboptimal changes - This one was mostly aimed at some move set changes where a move that's helpful in a ton of situations would be replaced for one that won't always work out.
Explanations - Mostly everyone did a good job with this one, but there were a few times where a threat might've been mentioned or a change might've been done without explaining it too well and it's something that can easily confuse some users, especially newer ones, so be sure to make sure everything is clear and concise.
Don't make the team too passive - This one goes a bit with the second and third bullet points, and what this refers to is when you remove an offensive mon for a bulkier and more passive one without compensating for that in the end. If it's too passive, then you'll have trouble with stall and balance teams, so be sure to consider the offensive and defensive aspects when rating a team.
All in all, we were very pleased with how the rates turned out this time around and we're glad to see everyone putting an effort into their rates. You're all on the right track and if you ever need any help/feedback with a rate or need anything clarified, you are more than welcome to ask any of the hosts or any of the Team Raters here in RMT. Keep up the good work
Gonna go ahead and extend the deadline a bit to Friday, October 13th, 11:59 PM GMT-5 and hopefully we'll have Round 3 up by the following Monday at the latest. If for whatever reason you need the weekend to get your rate in, let us know ahead of time and we'll work something out. Thanks to those that have already submitted a rate, you are free to edit them as much as you'd like until the deadline.
