Call Me Crazy

[Usatoday]

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Introduction
I have grown to absolutely love this team. It has been quite successful when I've used it on the ladder and for some localized tournament matches. The basis around the team was simple; I wanted to use Arceus-Fire and after hearing about how bad Chansey was in today's metagame because of Mega-Gengar I was curious about it myself. I created a team that is quite bizarre in it's nature in that I decided to go with a stall team obviously, but it ended up being a rain team. This was something That I thought was absolutely bizarre but somehow worked, alllowing me to use some various threats and open up moveslots for moves that are needed in the ever constant offensive metagame. These included pursuit Mega-Scizor and the ever so evil snatch Chansey.

Kyogre @ Leftovers
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 224 Def / 32 Spd
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Roar
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
First up we have a personal favorite of mine in physically defensive Kyogre. It serves as a good switch in for Ekiller so that it can phaze it out as my team is a little weak to offensive oriented swords dancers such as Rayquaza. Kyogre also lets me have something to check the ever present choice banded Ho-oh so that I don't have to risk the burn with Landorus-T and rest talk allows me to heal off whatever status is thrown at me. Kyogre also serves as my secondary switch in to Darkrai after my Xerneas is down if I need a sleep fodder for my team. Scald rounds off my set as the obvious stab move that scores multiple chances to burn when spamming the move randomly.

Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Stone Edge
This thing is a flying version of Groudon. It is simply incredible to play with and honestly it is quite annoying to face when used correctly. It can simultaneously check Rayquaza, Groudon, and Arceus through intimidate and toxic combination. Landorus also allows for my team to hit Ho-oh and Rayquaza with stone miss depending on how desperately I need to hit them. It provides the rocks support that any team nowadays must have and finally provided a stab earthquake to nail things such as Arceus-Rock, Zekrom, and Dialga.

Xerneas @ Leftovers
Ability: Fairy Aura
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SAtk
Bold Nature
- Moonblast
- Rest
- Aromatherapy
- Sleep Talk
Xerneas is sort of the oddball on my team. I find it often will either shine to the stars and back, or it will simply not do anything other than removing the status from my team. I have found that defensive Xerneas is simply an amazing check to the dragons that run rampant in the tier. It also acts as a great check to Yveltal and Darkrai who lack sludge bomb. Moonblast is ridiculously powerful even without investment that allows me to hit specially defensive Palkia for some nice damage.

Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Atk / 216 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Pursuit
- Roost
- Defog
Specially defensive Mega-Scizor the love of my life. I cannot describe how much I love using this thing. Now since I'm running Chansey on this team and the main thing that prevents Chansey from stopping it from doing it's job is Mega-Gengar pursuit might not be a bad option. Most Gengar will directly switch into Chansey from what I've found and it seemed a good way to defeat and trap Gengar especially with the rain support, I can also better handle hidden power fire variants.

Arceus-Fire @ Flame Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 248 HP / 164 SDef / 96 Spd
Timid Nature
- Judgment
- Thunder
- Calm Mind
- Recover
Arceus-Fire the star of the team, and the thing that scoffs at anything Xerneas throws. Even after a geomancy Xerneas can be made into setup fodder simply by spamming calm mind and recover. Judgement and Thunder (Thanks to rain) allow for some scary coverage hitting everything pretty hard except for Zekrom and Palkia both of which scare out Arceus-Fire. Fire Arceus also allows me to turn the tides on an opponents sun team and destroy them with sun boosted judgments rising to huge power.

Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
- Snatch
Ah my second love. This thing is what makes my stall teams, it does a great job playing mind games with all the Arceus forms. Seismic toss, Toxic, and Soft-boiled are standard moves on Chansey. Snatch however allows me to play mind games that can be incredibly fun to use. It can steal Calm minds, swords dances, and even Wishes from opposing Pokemon preventing them from healing. I have found that this is pretty much the only thing that can decently check Lustrous orb Palkia.


Importable
[hide]
Kyogre @ Leftovers
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 224 Def / 32 Spd
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Roar
- Rest
- Sleep Talk


Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Stone Edge


Xerneas @ Leftovers
Ability: Fairy Aura
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SAtk
Bold Nature
- Moonblast
- Rest
- Aromatherapy
- Sleep Talk


Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Atk / 216 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Pursuit
- Roost
- Defog


Arceus-Fire @ Flame Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 248 HP / 164 SDef / 96 Spd
Timid Nature
- Judgment
- Thunder
- Calm Mind
- Recover


Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
- Snatch
[/hide]​

 

[McDanger]

I cant think of a lot that can do a lot of damage to your team, stalls could be annoying with taunt as your team is so defensive. Swords dance Arceus could be a bit annoying as well just because it will do a lot to Xerneas and Landorus Therian while the odd Mewtwo X can be a bit annoying, but I imagine its easy enough to spot through preview. Mixed Rayquaza could also cause some headache as it will do a lot to your physical walls coming in with Draco Meteor. I can't think of to much to switch up without opening holes, stall breaker Yveltal could help handle stalls if they are annoying as well as pressure Mewtwo and gives you a second priority but thats about all i can think of, not the best at ubers tho so I could be wrong.

 

[Luckygreen9]

Deoxys Attack shreds this team big time. BoltBeam for the coverage of Kyogre and Lando, then Super Power wrecks Chansey. Something besides Scizor needs to be able to stand up to it, because he is your only check to Deoxys. Arceus is okay, but not too reliable to stand up against it. I would find a Pokémon to cover that up more than anything. Scarfed Darkrai seems like a reliable option, just to add a bit more fire power. The two games I played were both well over 60 turns, and I found it very hard to score kills with anything. It's just missing something to have fire power.

 

[Usatoday]

I cant think of a lot that can do a lot of damage to your team, stalls could be annoying with taunt as your team is so defensive. Swords dance Arceus could be a bit annoying as well just because it will do a lot to Xerneas and Landorus Therian while the odd Mewtwo X can be a bit annoying, but I imagine its easy enough to spot through preview. Mixed Rayquaza could also cause some headache as it will do a lot to your physical walls coming in with Draco Meteor. I can't think of to much to switch up without opening holes, stall breaker Yveltal could help handle stalls if they are annoying as well as pressure Mewtwo and gives you a second priority but thats about all i can think of, not the best at ubers tho so I could be wrong.

Ya yveltal was tested in a earlier version of the team. It did manage to patch up the weakness that I have to ekiller. However it also meant I had to give snatch chansey. With this happening I was more weak to arceus-electric as chansey had to do a lot more healing and such to get rid of it, rather than just snatching a calm mind from it. Rayquaza is actually not too threatening with physically defensive xerneas being bulkier than groudon thanks to its hp stat.

Deoxys Attack shreds this team big time. BoltBeam for the coverage of Kyogre and Lando, then Super Power wrecks Chansey. Something besides Scizor needs to be able to stand up to it, because he is your only check to Deoxys. Arceus is okay, but not too reliable to stand up against it. I would find a Pokémon to cover that up more than anything. Scarfed Darkrai seems like a reliable option, just to add a bit more fire power. The two games I played were both well over 60 turns, and I found it very hard to score kills with anything. It's just missing something to have fire power.

I really do not mean to sound rude, but have you ever played ubers at higher levels? Deoxys-A is always running Psycho boost / Superpower | Low kick / Knock off / Filler. Boltbeam is not even a thing on deoxys attack when used correctly. Arceus fire isn't even two hit ko'd by deoxys attack and can even use it as set up fodder. It must also get past scizor hence why it's there. Scarf darkrai would not help patch this nonexistent 'weakness' up as it would not be able to take a hit.

Potential Changes
Xerneas => Sylveon
Chansey => Blissey

 

[Luckygreen9]

First off, I'm talking from the experiences I had when I tested this team in Ubers on showdown. I ran into said Deoxys twice, so don't act like it's completely impossible for it to have any combination of the three moves I listed. If you run into a Deoxys like that, the team is going to have problems is all I'm saying. Sure there are standard sets, but don't call me an idiot for pointing out a threat.
Now for Sylveon over Xerneas, I don't see much benefit to that, as Xerneas can strike for a nice amount of damage without any investment like you said, and I don't see Sylveon yielding the same results. I also don't see much reason to use Blissey over Chansey.
Don't ask for advice if you aren't willing to listen to my experience with your team, I was just trying to help you out.

 

[KillerDraco]

Okay, I think it's time to take control of this topic before it gets a little out of hand.

First off, I'm talking from the experiences I had when I tested this team in Ubers on showdown. I ran into said Deoxys twice, so don't act like it's completely impossible for it to have any combination of the three moves I listed. If you run into a Deoxys like that, the team is going to have problems is all I'm saying. Sure there are standard sets, but don't call me an idiot for pointing out a threat.

He never called you an idiot.

He asked if you had played Ubers at the higher end of the ladder, which is a valid question. The reason being that the Uber tier, to be blunt, has a very high crap-to-competency discrepancy, which results in a lot of weird and inefficient sets being used at the lower end of the ladder. This is due to the fact that the Uber tier attracts a lot of people on the basis of "omg I can use any Pokemon", so the lower end of the spectrum tends to have a lot of... extraneous data, to put it one way. You really need to get to at least the 1500 level of the ladder before you start seeing any semblance of consistency in terms of the quality of battles. So while it's not impossible for BoltBeam + Superpower Deoxys-A to be used... It's so uncommon at the higher end of the ladder that it does not qualify as a threat. Something so obscure and rarely used isn't really worth being considered a threat.

...In addition the very ScarfDarkrai you mentioned is an unreliable check given it couldn't switch really switch into anything much and in fact opens up holes in this team's defensive synergy due to its frailty. Plus, part of Darkrai's claim to fame is its reliable sleep move in Dark Void, and getting locked into that would be foolhardy.

Don't ask for advice if you aren't willing to listen to my experience with your team, I was just trying to help you out.

He explained why the advice was not helpful, though, so it's not as though he's being close minded or anything. Let's not get overly defensive.

Onto business.

With regards to replacing Xerneas with Sylveon, I'll assume you'd be running a comparable set (physically defensive with Aromatherapy), you'd be trading Xerneas' extra power and better physical bulk for Sylveon's better special bulk and a bit more reliable healing in Wish. The lower physical bulk may be problematic. For instance, Sylveon can be 2HKO'ed by Zekrom's Bolt Strike, while Xerneas is only 3HKO'ed instead. Rayquaza can 2HKO Sylveon with the combination of V-create and ExtremeSpeed, while Xerneas survives it. Now, I'm not an avid Ubers player by any means, but given Xerneas exists on this team to help check physical dragon types, and Sylveon doesn't do it as well, your results may be underwhelming if you switch to Sylveon. Again though, I rarely play Ubers, so take it with a grain of salt.