UU Discussion Thread

[Azulart]

True, I was just thinking something that could try to "wall" haxorus.. options are just really limited.
But I can see Haxorus gaining very fast usage because of the stall hype with his wallbreaking role, man even M-aggron is scared of him due Mold Breaker completely ignoring Filter.
Yeah it wont surprise me either, however I am easily forgetting his average bulk due its massive attack maybe we think to high of Haxorus, well guess I will see it for myself one day.

 

[Sparkbeat]

The thing about Haxorus is that he's literal garbage against offensive teams. The majority of common offensive threats can either set-up alongside him and outspeed him, or flat out OHKO him with Stealth Rock damage. He floors stall with the Swords Dance set, true, but there's other Pokemon that are good against most Stall teams who can actually be a pain in the *** for some offensive teams, such as TR Reuniclus. As for being easy to fit on teams, it really depends. If you need a Stall breaker then yeah, he can be used on nearly any team for that role, but you just have to know that against offense, you'd better make sure you can handle the plethora of things that can come in on him after a kill and immediately threaten like Scarf Heracross, Scarf Hydreigon, Lucario with some prior damage, Alakazam, Infernape, and many more. This is assuming you're running SD rather than Dragon Dance. Even if you are running Dragon Dance, I laddered with the set for a while and I could almost never set one up because if I did, I'm be eating an attack that would either KO Haxorus, or send it down to the 30% range where it'd be easily revenged. So tl;dr, I've found it destroys Stall, but there's too many things on offensive teams that can either KO, or almost KO it, that it's dead weight against them, even as a late game cleaner.

 

[Eaglehawk]

Also, everyone jump on the Granbull bandwagon. For stall and defensively-oriented teams (e.g. PinkCore), it's one of the best answers to Haxorus and Heracross in the metagame right now. It actually can safely wall most of the Dark-types and Fighting-types in the tier (two of the big three important offensive typings there). Unlike Aromatisse, it has a crazy amount of power to OHKO all of the 'mons he counters with Play Rough + Earthquake. I highly suggest you all try using it on your PinkCores. Blissey + Granbull + Mew + Slowbro is the loaded version of this core, and it really does provide insane amount of defensive synergy.

Furthermore, a good friend on Smogon said that Curse Spiritomb is one of the best Pokemon on stall right now. Even though Curse cuts Spiritomb's HP in half, it does two things that helps Stall teams significantly:

1) Get past late-game sweepers
2) Break defensive cores more easily
3) Beat Substitute + Boosting move sweepers
The thing with Curse is that it chunks 1/4 of a Pokemon's HP per turn and it cannot be cured via Rest or any status removal. This severely hampers late-game sweepers, which tend to give Stall teams more problems the longer a game goes on. By severely limiting a sweeper's time on the field, Stall teams can manage snowball threats with greater ease. The same can be done to defensive cores. Curse forces defensive cores to switch out or continuously lose 25% of the Defensive Pokemon's HP. Combined with Hazards damage, this becomes a relatively effective control method. Spiritomb's bulk allows it to switch in multiple times and take neutral hits with relative ease and it will always have enough HP to Curse. Spiritomb can heal off the damage by using Rest (and then have someone Heal Bell) or having someone WishPass to it (which isn't hard thanks to its immunities). It's definitely something worth trying on UU Stall teams.

 

[Tormented]

Venomoth is banned and they're now retesting Volcarona.

Volcarona is very threatening if you let it set up but it does have solid counters like Blissey, Goodra and a bunch of checks that can live a +1 and kill it. It also have a hard time setting up now that UU has become much more offensive. I made a quick team pairing it with CB Dugtrio to trap Blissey and a lot of its other counters, I also run HP water to hit rock and fire types like Mega Aero and Chandelure.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/uu-147804116

Here's a battle I just a did showing off the core and as you can see in the replay Dugtrio do struggle against wish protect Blissey but if it's soft boiled it can trap it easily. And after Blissey was gone it's an easy sweep for Volcarona.

 

[Eaglehawk]

Venomoth is banned and they're now retesting Volcarona.

Volcarona is very threatening if you let it set up but it does have solid counters like Blissey, Goodra and a bunch of checks that can live a +1 and kill it. It also have a hard time setting up now that UU has become much more offensive. I made a quick team pairing it with CB Dugtrio to trap Blissey and a lot of its other counters, I also run HP water to hit rock and fire types like Mega Aero and Chandelure.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/uu-147804116

Here's a battle I just a did showing off the core and as you can see in the replay Dugtrio do struggle against wish protect Blissey but if it's soft boiled it can trap it easily. And after Blissey was gone it's an easy sweep for Volcarona.

I've experimented with Will-O-Wisp/Toxic Volcarona, since most of her switch-ins (not named Chandy/RK9) suffer a lot from status. The former works as an Aero lure and the latter works better on the Sub CM Chandy/Bulky Dog/Fire types in general. Either way, it's a good Lure set that can easily bring an offensive advantage by giving Pokemon with similar weaknesses to Aero/Chandy (a.k.a. PinkCore, Infernape).