ORAS OU Sun/Moon Release Tourney: rate my OU team!

[Raven8]

My local GameStop is hosting a tournament for the midnight release of Sun and Moon, and they're going by Smogon's OU rules (heck yes). Really happy with this, so figured it was time to dust off my old team and get some ratings/advice!


Lopunny(F)@Lopunite

Nature: Jolly
Ability: Limber>Scrappy
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def
- Fake Out
- Return
- High Jump Kick
- Power-Up Punch
Role: Cleaner, Sweeper, Wallbreaker
Lopunny is largely the core offensive presence of my team. Most of what I have here is for the sake of getting her on the field safe and sound. The set is fairly straight-forward, with no true deviation from what's recommended (you'll soon find that this is a trend). I opted for Power-Up Punch because I already have plenty of ice-coverage, and it works great when the opponent is expecting a first-turn Fake Out.



Weavile(F)@Lifeorb

Nature: Jolly
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def
- Knock Off
- Pursuit
- Ice Shard
- Icicle Crash
Role: Cleaner, Revenge-Killer, Pursuit Trapper
Fast as blazes and twice as dangerous. Weavile is a fantastic cleaner and revenge killer. She generally shreds threats such as Dragonite, Garchomp, and Landorus-U, while also providing very powerful Knock-Off support and taking care of many of the more threatening Psychic types that would otherwise demolish Lopunny. I'd love to put Poison Jab to help out against fairy types, but I honestly feel like pursuit-trapping threatening Psychic types such as Mega Alakazam and Latios is more important to the team, though a Focus Blast from the former is pretty much game for her.



Jirachi(*)@Choice Scarf

Nature: Jolly
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def
- Iron Head
- U-Turn
- Ice Punch
- Trick
Role: Revenge Killer, Pivot, Stall-Breaker, Last-Resort Flinch Assault
I tend to lead with this little guy and U-Turn out into something more favorable. Jirachi threatens Fairy, Psychic, and Ice types that may otherwise cause worries to some of my other team members. In particular, it is a huge threat to Mega Gardevoir. Ice-Punch provides coverage against ground types, and a well times Trick can easily shut down a supportive 'mon in an instant. Beyond this, I've actually won several matches when Jirachi was my last remaining 'mon by spamming Serene Grace Iron Head. Needless to say, this works MUCH better if I happen to have scored a Static para from Zapdos. It's not a strategy that can be relied on, but it can work wonders.



Zapdos@Leftovers

Nature: Bold
Ability: Static
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 68 SpA
- Thunderbolt
- Heat Wave
- Hidden Power Ice
- Roost
Rolls: Physical wall, Momentum builder
Zapdos has amazing synergy with this team, dropping Fighting types, Steel types, and bird-spam like it's nothing. This Zapdos outright counters most variants of Talonflame and Mega Scizor and brings a sudden defensive presence to an otherwise offensive team. Not to mention the fact that I've had many a sweep shut down entirely by a random Static proc. Sacrificing Static and my Ice coverage (which hurts, as this thing baits in 'mons like Garchomp, Landorus, and Gliscor like nobody's business), I also have a Pressure variant with Thunderbolt, Heatwave, Roost, and Defog that works just as well.


Gengar(M)(*)@Black Sludge

Nature: Timid
Ability: Levitate (until Sun/Moon. RIP)
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe / 4 Sdef
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Wave
- Will-O-Wisp
- Substitute
Rolls: Burn spreader, Special attacker
When the opportunity presents itself, a quick Substitute from Gengar can wreak absolute havoc. High-power special attacks and burns quickly follow. Gengar checks powerful Fairy types like Clefable, and has great neutral coverage. It also has solid synergy with the rest of my team, finding many chances to switch in. Beyond this, Will-O-Wisp makes Zapdos nearly impenetrable on the physical side. I opted to use the event Gengar that's packing Sludge Wave over Sludge Bomb, as an accidental poison on a switch could be quite an issue. His biggest issue has to be Bisharp, which resists both of its STABs and can pose a large threat if switched in without a Substitute up, but a Will-O-Wisp greatly helps there, and makes it easily picked off by Zapdos or Lopunny.


Clefable(F)@Leftovers

Nature: Calm
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 84 SpD
- Moon Blast
- Fire Blast
- Softboiled
- Stealth Rock
Rolls: Stealth Rock Setter, Status Absorber, Defensive Pivot
What's a team without Stealth Rock and Fairy spam? Clefable's typing has solid coverage and synergy with the rest of my team, shutting down both Fairy and Dark spam, which most of my other team has issues with on one side of the equation or another. Fire-Blast for coverage against Steel types, and Softboiled to keep her healthy. Yes, I have a Softboiled Clefable in-game.


Final Thoughts
This is easily my most offensively oriented team, as I generally run balance-to-stall. I feel like it has the tools to deal with most top threats in one way or another, but most answers lack any form of redundancy (save Ice, have plenty of Ice). In particular, all but Clefable and Zapdos have a weakness to either Dark or Fairy, though all but Zapdos also resist at least one of the two. I haven't really used this team in some time, so I can't recall exactly what gave me issues, but I do remember that I was generally able to forge a plan on the fly in most scenarios due to the diverse nature of what I'm packing. I found it hardest to explain why Mega Lopunny and Clefable are on the team, though that's mainly because I built the team around the former, so most 'mons are there to support her, while Clefable is more a jack-of-all-trades good 'mon with good resists.

Thanks for looking, advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[Raven8]

Gunna give this a BUMP.

 

[Iloveleague]

Quick rate: teams not bad. Would prefer a keldeo counter. Gengar doenst do a whole lot for you.

Try calm mind latios > gengar.
Gives you a nice stallbreaker and something to eat hits from waters. Surf would also work pretty well since its hard for you to switch into heatran.

Healing wish+ heart stamp > ice punch/trick also helps you revive a wincon and i dont think you will be tricking away too often. Heart stamp lets you beat keldeo/lopunny easier with jirachi

Would also try defog > hidden power ice on zapdos since u have 2 rocks weak mon on the team. Latios can also run it but it surf/cm is more effective. Try volt switch > tbolt on zapdos as well. Helps build momentum but its more of a personal choice.

 

[Tinberz]

Hi. Nice team you have got!

This team is a pretty cool Offense team with plenty of Offense Breakers. Unfortunately, it comes at a cost of having a difficulty in breaking fatter builds, especially Stall. Other weaknesses of your team include Fire, Water and Dark types since you lack switch-ins against them. Although you are are running Offense, I feel it would be better to have a resist of some sort against them as you have some mons like Clefable and Zapdos which can give them switch-in opportunities.

My first suggestion for your team is to use Specs

Keldeo instead of

Gengar. As you stated, Gengar's roles are to spread burns and be your Special Attacker. Keldeo does this perfectly. With Scald, Keldeo has a 30% chance of burning switch-ins. It being a spammable move means that Keldeo can easily fire off Specs-powered Scalds to wear down the opponent's team massively with Scald damage + (eventual) burns. Most importantly, it resists all 3 types I mentioned before that threatened your team. This means that you now have a switch-in to Fire, Water and Dark type attacks, being able to come in safely a couple of times and scare the foe out, dealing some damage or gaining momentum in the process. With this change, you are able to retain the roles formerly performed by Gengar while having some additional benefits. I ran Focus Blast as the last move to surprise Rotom-W, which annoys your team quite a bit.

At this point, you're still pretty weak to Sand Offense, Keldeo, Azumarill and Rocks. My next suggestion to mitigate these problems is to change

Zapdos to

Rotom-W. Like Zapdos, Rotom-W checks BirdSpam and Steel types pretty well. Having access to Will-o-Wisp means that it can cripple Physical Attackers, allowing it to check them even better. With Volt Switch, Rotom-W can form a VoltTurn core with Jirachi to gain momentum for your team. Thanks to levitate, it can check Sand Driller pretty well, while being able to switch into some Water attacks thanks to its Water typng. I chose to run 128 Speed EVs on your Rotom-W so as to outspeed Adamant Bisharp and hit it with a Wisp before it gets to wreak havoc - while Keldeo is a decent check, no recovery means it can get worn down pretty quickly.

At this point in time, your team still struggles against MZam. To make it easier to deal with, I'm suggesting Thunder Wave > Fire Blast on

Clefable. As you have Rotom-W, Steel types are far less of a problem and you can afford to forgo the Fire coverage on Clefable. Thunder Wave allows you to cripple fast Attackers and can even stop a sweep - assuming you survive a hit. My next suggestion is optional but you might want to make Clefable max PhysDef to deal with Physical Attackers such as MLop or MMedicham faster. This suggestion, however, makes you weaker to MZam so it's up to you.

To deal with many fat mons that like to switch into MLop such as Slowbro and Lando-T, I'm suggesting to run Toxic > Power-up Punch on

MLop. Toxic allows you to cripple these fat mons, allowing you to wear them down more easily if you catch them with a Toxic on the switch. On the other hand, an attack after a PuP tends to not KO these mons, while to take more chip damage from Lando-T.

To further improve your match-up against fatter teams, I think you should run Swords Dance > Pursuit on your

Weavile. Although this might sounds weird as Weavile doesn't have good bulk and would find it hard to set-up, the whole point of this is to SD on forced switches. A +2 Weavile is really scary, breaking fast and slow teams alike. On the other hand, while you might appreciate some Pursuit support, I think SD is more important for you to break fatter teams more easily.

I think you should run the standard Scarf

Jirachi moveset with Iron Head, Fire Punch, U-Turn and Healing Wish. Fire Punch allows you to hit Steel types like MZor and Ferrothorn while Healing Wish allows you to heal a weakened teammate, giving them a second chance in the game. I don't think Ice Punch is necessary as you already have good Ice STAB on Weavile and while Trick might be useful, Healing Wish is better for an Offensive team like yours.

This is your new team:

importable

Lopunny @ Lopunnite
Ability: Limber
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Return
- Fake Out
- Toxic

Weavile @ Life Orb
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Swords Dance

Jirachi @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- U-turn
- Fire Punch
- Healing Wish

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 132 Def / 128 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Hydro Pump
- Focus Blast

Clefable @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 84 SpD
Calm Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Moonblast
- Soft-Boiled
- Thunder Wave

That's it for my rate. Hope I helped, thanks for reading and have a nice day! n_n

 

[Reymedy]

i'll make it quick as i dont really rate too much anymore
but when i've seen the 3 first pokemon of your team it reminded me of mine (the exact same first three)
that's where the similarity ends though, as your last 3 mons are nothing like mine

i think it'll be interesting for you to see what were my choices for the 3 last slots as opposed to yours, which i think are kind of offbeat

first off, the "basics" in OU want you to focus on typing requirements more than on "roles" (which is were beginners like you can be confused, as many tutorials insist on how teams should be built around roles, which is not only wrong in most cases, but also misleading)
so basically, you want to have a water type and a ground type in an OU team (you can check any tournament replay you want, you'll see a ground/water in more than 95% of the teams)
it's obvious to see what this mistep in your building caused, as you end up with a no water resist team (which is straight up a no-no in the most recent OU metagames)

for the record, my last 3 mons are manaphy/landot/lati so you can see from there that I got those requirements checked in already

the last main thing that i'm "checking" with lati is the "keldeo answer" box
which is something your team, although more defensive (that's why I said offbeat earlier), does not do

there's a lot of different ways to go for those three slots, you could simply go landot over zapdos and rotomw over gengar (who isn't providing jack for you, even though, yes, that's a special sweeper, but it's not really how building should work)
you'd be left with an alright team, and you could put SR on landot to give more tools for your clefable to be an actual threat
thing is, you'd not be covering keldeo too well (among other things), which is kind of annoying

the things that can fit in well would be either tornadust av or a lati (that another guy proposed) to deal with keldeo

i personally went with landot/latios and manaphy as I appreciated the way i could change manaphy's set for what I was expecting to face (you can change its moveset to rd+boost to beat stall, to tg+3 coverage options for more balanced builds etc)
that's not something you can do in a rl tournaments though, but 3 atk usually is the best on average

all in all, i think you should rework the last 3 slots with what I said in mind (try to fit in sr, ground, water, keldeo answer mainly, then make sure you're not buttnaked vs scizor, metam, manec.. then finally try to think about your chances vs stall)
you have all the cards in hand, if you're in doubt, always favor the most aggressive approach : your team is shaping to be an offense, don't try to fit in defensive walls or whatever nonsense some tutorials try to make your fit in

good luck

ps: you want a coverage option on weavile most of the time to nail ferro/heatran (low kick basically) since these are annoying to switch into for the team
i'd advise you to run ice punch over pup on lop too, i think you'll appreciate having this cookie-cutter option in your tournament

 

[Raven8]

Wow... sorry for the late reply here, but this has given me a TON to work with. While I don't have the exacts, this is what I'm working with now:


Lopunny: Power Up Punch>Toxic/Ice Punch (I find massive utility in both, not sure which I'll use right now)

Jirachi: Ice Punch>Fire Punch, Trick>Healing Wish

Weavile: Considering Pursuit>Low Kick (Pursuit trapping can save my Lopunny, only reason that I'm hesitant)

Zapdos>Rotom (Physically defensive, leftovers, VoltSwitch+Hydro Pump+Will-O-Wisp+Pain Split)

Gengar>Landorus U (Physically defensive, leftovers, U-Turn+Earthquake+Stealth Rock+Knock Off)

Clefable: Stealth Rock>Thunder Wave


Going to tweak it a bit more before tonight. Thanks a ton to everyone, and especially Reymedy: you allowed me to see team building a bit differently, and I GREATLY appreciate it!

 

[Raven8]

Double-post time!

Back from the tournament... and I'm happy to say that with all of the help provided here, I won the whole shebang!

I followed everything outlined above with one exception; I'd heard that one of my opponents was stall-heavy, so I switched Healing Wish back to Trick... and BOY am I glad that I did! I opened with Jirachi and he opened with freaking Gliscor. Turn-one Trick on a Substitute, instantly neutering what could very well have been his most powerful 'mon.

On another note; BOY am I glad that you guys recommended Low Kick on Weavile; the guy in the finals was packing a status-spreading Aggron... and my Weavile absolutely destroyed it.

Anyway; thanks again for all of the help. I've gotta' say that this is the first time that I've had a team that didn't feel like it was packing a VIP. Every single 'mon pulled full weight and did their jobs fantastically!