INTRODUCTION:
I find frameworks to be advantageous to succeed in the process of OU teambuilding. There is no specific guide or formula that can guarantee the quintessential group of 6 Pokemon one may be looking for; however, using a framework during the course of teambuilding provides a simpler way of reaching the final product primarily due to the fact that frameworks help determine which Pokemon would be ideal for your team. To define a framework, I would simply say it is a list of guidelines that narrows down one's choices during the teambuilding process (read: not an absolute, but a recommendation). Limitless introduced one of his teambuilding frameworks (or formula, I will shift between both words throughout the OP) in his BW1 RMT. His formula, which is basically a "dumbed down" version of any given Hyper Offensive team, was the following:
Pictured is Limitless's team listed so you can see what I'm talking about as I discuss. The above formula is what Limitless used as his baseline for his Hyper Offensive teams (obviously wouldn't work for stall). A lead is rather obvious in this formula: a Pokemon that sets Stealth Rock. In the team Limitless posted, he used Azelf as a lead. Azelf allowed Limitless to have a lead that could keep Stealth Rock off his side of the field while keeping Stealth Rock on the opponent's side. In DPP, this characteristic often categorized whether or not a lead was good in the metagame and still holds some merit today. Azelf's key to success was the ability to self-spinblock via Explosion while having a fast Taunt to stop other users of said move in their tracks. Azelf is not the only lead one may use if following the aforementioned formula, however. There are a myriad of options that are unique and have different niches. Garchomp in the current metagame can self-spinblock to an extent much like Azelf with Rough Skin and the occasional Rocky Helmet as an added bonus. This means spinners cannot just spam Rapid Spin until your lead dies or runs out of Stealth Rock PP. Terrakion punishes most spinners with its strong STAB's, but it still loses out to few. The list goes on and on and there are several options one can explore.
"Breaker" is a term Limitless nicked and it involves hitting opposing walls hard. Please note that this formula revolves around Hyper Offense and weakening counters. I will get to balanced and stall teams later. A breaker is often a sweeper that hits hard and requires you to weaken your Pokemon to kill it. The basis around this type of Hyper Offensive team is to have Pokemon with similar counters and weaken them so you eventually sweep. For example, Limitless' team (since I keep referring back to his team, you can find it here) used a Dragon Dance Dragonite as his primary breaker. How do you beat Dragonite commonly through defensive checks? Skarmory, Tangrowth, Gliscor, Landorus-T (now) and Scarfers with Hidden Power Ice or a Dragon-type move. The Pokemon in the former are all weakened drastically by Dragonite so that a late-game Salamence can sweep, while the latter are just set-up bait for the other breaker in Lucario. Speaking of Lucario, he is in a similar vein of weakening common physical checks. Once again, Pokemon like Skarmory and Gliscor are weakened so that one of your other Physical sweepers can finally sweep.
The rest of Limitless's formula is rather self-explanatory. A Scarfer is practically a fundamental necessity for each and every team. Not having a Scarfer results in your team typically being weak to opposing setup sweepers and other opposing Scarfers among other random fastmons (think: Dragonite, Salamence, Jolteon, Terrakion). A utility can be practically any Pokemon: It's a pokemon that fulfills the role of checking Pokemon that your team has a Problem with. Rotom-W and Scizor are the prime examples due to the fact that they can check a wide variety of Pokemon. Scizor checks Terrakion and Lati@s for Limitless, for example, which makes it an ideal Utility. Having your utility maintain momentum is key which is why Rotom-W and Scizor are ideal due to the fact they can Volt Switch and U-turn respectively. A sweeper on the formula is basically a breaker, however, being able to not "break" through a defensive Pokemon or building the team around a certain Pokemon relegates its status to this slot. Like I said earlier, having a formula does not guarantee success immediately. You still must have checks to most individual Pokemon (although that is less important in Hyper Offense) and cannot be flat-out 6-0'd by any typical sweeper. It takes testing to get your team to be ideal. Building a Hyper Offensive team around a Pokemon while keeping checks and counters in mind as well as using this formula as a guideline will help you create a well built team.
For more balanced-based teams, I personally have a basic formula I typically use. Unlike Limitless', it's not precise and personalizes each Pokemon slot. It's more of a list of things I like to have on a team and several slots can overlap.
Much like the team above, the team is still fit for the current metagame and is still relevant to talk about. Now, I want to prove my point on how you cannot just use a formula and expect it to work, but you need to build a team with the formula in mind. The team above, like I said earlier, was built around Gyarados. Gyarados' common stops are Rotom-W and Ferrothorn primarily, so Breloom was added as a partner. Politoed was also added as both Breloom and Gyarados appreciated rain support. For a Steel-type choice, the choice was fairly simple as Jirachi benefits from rain with its annoying Thunder and forms the GyaraRachi core which is very effective. Jirachi also resists Hurricane unlike its other common Rain Steel for Lati@s, Scizor, which the team needed. The team seemed like it wanted a spinner due to Gyarados' weakness to Stealth Rock, so Donphan was added as it could check Specially Defensive Jirachi while checking Dragons and providing Stealth Rock. Finally Latias was added for the secondary Fighting resist and sun check. Keep in mind that this is a team that was built using purely smart partners. As you can see, it fits into my mold of a balanced team, but you need to keep in mind the steps I listed above it took to create it. You cannot simply put in 6 Pokemon that have the characteristic I listed without having inherent weaknesses.
Now, I never really explained the reasoning behind my initial framework in the first place, so I will now. First off is the Water-resistances. Truth be told, rain is so dominant in the current metagame that you have to have 2-3 Water resistances. Specs and Scarf Hydro Pumps are just too painful otherwise. Espeically on balanced teams where all your Pokemon aren't major offensive threats, this is essential to a strong balanced teams. The second bullet, 2 Fighting-resists, isn't as crucial but still rather important. I find that fighters are some of the best Pokemon current in OU. Terrakion, Keldeo, Breloom, etc. are all S and A-ranked threats by the OU Viability listing. Having two resists is important to me because I find having such threats be Fighting, you need to counteract with resistances. However, if you were going to cheat on a rule, this would be the one. Next is a Ground-type Pokemon. I add this because having a Ground type insures that you aren't Jirachi weak and you have a bulky Pokemon along with an Electric-immunity. Next is a way to check Sun teams. Often a Dragon is best suited for this, but having something like a Flame Charge Heatran is also good. Just a SpDef Heatran alone will NOT work because Dugtrio is so common. Shed Shell Heatran can work, but not Dugtrio-prone sets. A steel-type to check Lati@s is rather obvious since they are such huge metagame threats. Scizor, Heatran, and Jirachi all work in this regard. A priority user to OHKO Terrakion is more of a rule of thumb in Balance teams to have a good priority user. Azumarill, Scizor, and Breloom all work here. NOTE: I often use a Poison Heal Breloom if I have Breloom and Scizor / another priority user on the same team, OR I change Scizor to something like a Scarfed varient to avoid redundancy. Lastly, a Pokemon to have a good lead matchup is rather crucial since otherwise you will lose to random Sashed Breloom or Sashed Tyranitar. A cool thing to try is Band Haxorus since it can OHKO all Sash Breloom leads with Dual Chop. Lastly, being able to go through the threatlist of common Pokemon and check / counters most of them is key. If you're 6-0'd by Landorus or Keldeo, obviously you need to switch up your team some. NOTICE: in Sun teams this framework isn't as relevant due to the different Pokemon they often contain from typical teams, but this is still a good guideline for most teams.
I will post a stall core eventually, but it is very different from Offensive and Balance and doesn't have a basic framework per se.
Anyways, I hope this helped clear the air about frameworks since I've seen a few questions about it in various threads.
As a side note, try to avoid redundancies as much as possible. I've seen a lot of people RMT a team with both Keldeo and Lucario; however, both have the offensive niche of checking Scizor and thus become redundant. Celebi and Latios on the same team can be cool, but in general they are the same basic Pokemon with similar goals and often become redundant. There is usually a better option, so try to avoid redundancies as much as possible!
CONCLUSION:
The purpose of this thread is to spark discussion on OU frameworks, your opinions on them, and how you think they should be used. What are common redundancies you see that you wish to address? Obviously do not limit the discussion to this and expand, but that is the basic goal I had in mind.
Thanks for reading.
p.s.s. Ginganinja rocks my world. He's the best! I am his eternal slave.
I find frameworks to be advantageous to succeed in the process of OU teambuilding. There is no specific guide or formula that can guarantee the quintessential group of 6 Pokemon one may be looking for; however, using a framework during the course of teambuilding provides a simpler way of reaching the final product primarily due to the fact that frameworks help determine which Pokemon would be ideal for your team. To define a framework, I would simply say it is a list of guidelines that narrows down one's choices during the teambuilding process (read: not an absolute, but a recommendation). Limitless introduced one of his teambuilding frameworks (or formula, I will shift between both words throughout the OP) in his BW1 RMT. His formula, which is basically a "dumbed down" version of any given Hyper Offensive team, was the following:
- Lead
- Breaker #1
- Breaker #2
- Utility
- Sweeper
- Scarfer
Pictured is Limitless's team listed so you can see what I'm talking about as I discuss. The above formula is what Limitless used as his baseline for his Hyper Offensive teams (obviously wouldn't work for stall). A lead is rather obvious in this formula: a Pokemon that sets Stealth Rock. In the team Limitless posted, he used Azelf as a lead. Azelf allowed Limitless to have a lead that could keep Stealth Rock off his side of the field while keeping Stealth Rock on the opponent's side. In DPP, this characteristic often categorized whether or not a lead was good in the metagame and still holds some merit today. Azelf's key to success was the ability to self-spinblock via Explosion while having a fast Taunt to stop other users of said move in their tracks. Azelf is not the only lead one may use if following the aforementioned formula, however. There are a myriad of options that are unique and have different niches. Garchomp in the current metagame can self-spinblock to an extent much like Azelf with Rough Skin and the occasional Rocky Helmet as an added bonus. This means spinners cannot just spam Rapid Spin until your lead dies or runs out of Stealth Rock PP. Terrakion punishes most spinners with its strong STAB's, but it still loses out to few. The list goes on and on and there are several options one can explore.
"Breaker" is a term Limitless nicked and it involves hitting opposing walls hard. Please note that this formula revolves around Hyper Offense and weakening counters. I will get to balanced and stall teams later. A breaker is often a sweeper that hits hard and requires you to weaken your Pokemon to kill it. The basis around this type of Hyper Offensive team is to have Pokemon with similar counters and weaken them so you eventually sweep. For example, Limitless' team (since I keep referring back to his team, you can find it here) used a Dragon Dance Dragonite as his primary breaker. How do you beat Dragonite commonly through defensive checks? Skarmory, Tangrowth, Gliscor, Landorus-T (now) and Scarfers with Hidden Power Ice or a Dragon-type move. The Pokemon in the former are all weakened drastically by Dragonite so that a late-game Salamence can sweep, while the latter are just set-up bait for the other breaker in Lucario. Speaking of Lucario, he is in a similar vein of weakening common physical checks. Once again, Pokemon like Skarmory and Gliscor are weakened so that one of your other Physical sweepers can finally sweep.
The rest of Limitless's formula is rather self-explanatory. A Scarfer is practically a fundamental necessity for each and every team. Not having a Scarfer results in your team typically being weak to opposing setup sweepers and other opposing Scarfers among other random fastmons (think: Dragonite, Salamence, Jolteon, Terrakion). A utility can be practically any Pokemon: It's a pokemon that fulfills the role of checking Pokemon that your team has a Problem with. Rotom-W and Scizor are the prime examples due to the fact that they can check a wide variety of Pokemon. Scizor checks Terrakion and Lati@s for Limitless, for example, which makes it an ideal Utility. Having your utility maintain momentum is key which is why Rotom-W and Scizor are ideal due to the fact they can Volt Switch and U-turn respectively. A sweeper on the formula is basically a breaker, however, being able to not "break" through a defensive Pokemon or building the team around a certain Pokemon relegates its status to this slot. Like I said earlier, having a formula does not guarantee success immediately. You still must have checks to most individual Pokemon (although that is less important in Hyper Offense) and cannot be flat-out 6-0'd by any typical sweeper. It takes testing to get your team to be ideal. Building a Hyper Offensive team around a Pokemon while keeping checks and counters in mind as well as using this formula as a guideline will help you create a well built team.
For more balanced-based teams, I personally have a basic formula I typically use. Unlike Limitless', it's not precise and personalizes each Pokemon slot. It's more of a list of things I like to have on a team and several slots can overlap.
- 2 Water-resistances if there is a "strong Water resist like Specially Defensive Rotom-W; 3 of them if you lack a strong one.
- 2 Fighting-resistances
- A Ground-type Pokemon
- A Dragon or some other way to check Sun-teams
- A Steel-type Pokemon to check Lati@s
- A Pokemon that has a good matchup against most other leads; often this can be more than one teamslot to match up against all common leads
- A priority-user with the capability of OHKO'ing Terrakion
- Checks and counters to all common Pokemon
Much like the team above, the team is still fit for the current metagame and is still relevant to talk about. Now, I want to prove my point on how you cannot just use a formula and expect it to work, but you need to build a team with the formula in mind. The team above, like I said earlier, was built around Gyarados. Gyarados' common stops are Rotom-W and Ferrothorn primarily, so Breloom was added as a partner. Politoed was also added as both Breloom and Gyarados appreciated rain support. For a Steel-type choice, the choice was fairly simple as Jirachi benefits from rain with its annoying Thunder and forms the GyaraRachi core which is very effective. Jirachi also resists Hurricane unlike its other common Rain Steel for Lati@s, Scizor, which the team needed. The team seemed like it wanted a spinner due to Gyarados' weakness to Stealth Rock, so Donphan was added as it could check Specially Defensive Jirachi while checking Dragons and providing Stealth Rock. Finally Latias was added for the secondary Fighting resist and sun check. Keep in mind that this is a team that was built using purely smart partners. As you can see, it fits into my mold of a balanced team, but you need to keep in mind the steps I listed above it took to create it. You cannot simply put in 6 Pokemon that have the characteristic I listed without having inherent weaknesses.
Now, I never really explained the reasoning behind my initial framework in the first place, so I will now. First off is the Water-resistances. Truth be told, rain is so dominant in the current metagame that you have to have 2-3 Water resistances. Specs and Scarf Hydro Pumps are just too painful otherwise. Espeically on balanced teams where all your Pokemon aren't major offensive threats, this is essential to a strong balanced teams. The second bullet, 2 Fighting-resists, isn't as crucial but still rather important. I find that fighters are some of the best Pokemon current in OU. Terrakion, Keldeo, Breloom, etc. are all S and A-ranked threats by the OU Viability listing. Having two resists is important to me because I find having such threats be Fighting, you need to counteract with resistances. However, if you were going to cheat on a rule, this would be the one. Next is a Ground-type Pokemon. I add this because having a Ground type insures that you aren't Jirachi weak and you have a bulky Pokemon along with an Electric-immunity. Next is a way to check Sun teams. Often a Dragon is best suited for this, but having something like a Flame Charge Heatran is also good. Just a SpDef Heatran alone will NOT work because Dugtrio is so common. Shed Shell Heatran can work, but not Dugtrio-prone sets. A steel-type to check Lati@s is rather obvious since they are such huge metagame threats. Scizor, Heatran, and Jirachi all work in this regard. A priority user to OHKO Terrakion is more of a rule of thumb in Balance teams to have a good priority user. Azumarill, Scizor, and Breloom all work here. NOTE: I often use a Poison Heal Breloom if I have Breloom and Scizor / another priority user on the same team, OR I change Scizor to something like a Scarfed varient to avoid redundancy. Lastly, a Pokemon to have a good lead matchup is rather crucial since otherwise you will lose to random Sashed Breloom or Sashed Tyranitar. A cool thing to try is Band Haxorus since it can OHKO all Sash Breloom leads with Dual Chop. Lastly, being able to go through the threatlist of common Pokemon and check / counters most of them is key. If you're 6-0'd by Landorus or Keldeo, obviously you need to switch up your team some. NOTICE: in Sun teams this framework isn't as relevant due to the different Pokemon they often contain from typical teams, but this is still a good guideline for most teams.
I will post a stall core eventually, but it is very different from Offensive and Balance and doesn't have a basic framework per se.
Anyways, I hope this helped clear the air about frameworks since I've seen a few questions about it in various threads.
As a side note, try to avoid redundancies as much as possible. I've seen a lot of people RMT a team with both Keldeo and Lucario; however, both have the offensive niche of checking Scizor and thus become redundant. Celebi and Latios on the same team can be cool, but in general they are the same basic Pokemon with similar goals and often become redundant. There is usually a better option, so try to avoid redundancies as much as possible!
CONCLUSION:
The purpose of this thread is to spark discussion on OU frameworks, your opinions on them, and how you think they should be used. What are common redundancies you see that you wish to address? Obviously do not limit the discussion to this and expand, but that is the basic goal I had in mind.
Thanks for reading.
p.s.s. Ginganinja rocks my world. He's the best! I am his eternal slave.
