SS OU Outclassed Mons Vol.2 - Blacephalon Bulky Offense!

[qwertyman888]

My last post here was a Haxorus team, and now I'm using another team built around another outclassed and off-meta mon: Blacephalon! Though it's outclassed by the resident ghost horse, I've found its Choice Specs set to be incredibly powerful, especially with its 151 spA, though the scarf set seems to be more popular, since its speed tier is unfortunately rather middling. However, several assets Blacephalon sport are that it stays in on Rillaboom(at near full HP), and has access to Trick, an extremely valuable move on a choiced Pokemon, especially a Fire-type walled by Blissey. Getting free Heavy-Duty Boots and crippling its main wall is certainly a point in its favor. I had a lot of fun building this team, and it's quite fun to use on the ladder. Here's the team!


Blacephalon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Overheat
- Trick
- Shadow Ball
- Flamethrower

The 'mon this team is structured around, Blacephalon busts holes in a ton of Pokemon with Choice Specs Overheat. It can come in and usually nab a ton of chip on Heatranless teams, with Shadow Ball for its other STAB move for incoming Toxapex/Swampert, or a more reliable move versus teams with Heatran. Flamethrower is weaker, but can't miss and doesn't drop SpA, and can be useful in certain endgame situations. Trick is for Blissey and a few other walls. I've used Blacephalon mostly to heavily chip or outright OHKO opposing Pokemon, not as a sweeper or cleaner, since most teams have enough speed to outpace Blace.


Rillaboom @ Life Orb
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Grassy Glide
- Superpower
- Knock Off

Rillaboom helps to back Blacephalon up by annihilating Water-types that want to wall it. Passive recovery is also good for Blacephalon and Swampert. Swords Dance Rillaboom is my favorite set. It annihilates sand and rain and is great in most endgames, as well as bringing great speed control to the team. Superpower is for Ferrothorn, Heatran, Corviknight, and Mandibuzz (a chipped Mandibuzz/Corviknight falls to a +2 Superpower). Knock Off is for things like Amoonguss, and any Ghost types.


Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Damp
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Careful Nature
- Protect
- Flip Turn
- High Horsepower
- Stealth Rock

Swampert rounds out the Fire/Water/Grass core, provides Stealth Rock, and a reliable Cinderace check to the team, as well as a decent blanket specially defensive team member. Protect gets it up to 12 percent recovery with Grassy Terrain up while also being useful for blocking High Jump Kicks from Cinderace, and because it needs the terrain for recovery, it's running High Horsepower over Earthquake. Flip Turn is a great pivot move that it's clicking a lot to get some residual damage and keep momentum up. Its Ground typing helps to balance out the electric weakness of two other members of the team.


Zapdos-Galar @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Stomping Tantrum

Gapdos is great against opposing Defogs, as the only defogger it can't touch is Zapdos, the rest being susceptible to Brave Birds or Close Combats to the face.The scarf set provides speed control, and is especially great against opposing breakers like Kartana. It gets U-turn for momentum, and can even threaten things like Tapu Koko with Stomping Tantrum. Having Gapdos in the back sometimes keeps rocks up with the sheer threat of it coming onto the field.



Hydreigon @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 124 HP / 132 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Dark Pulse
- Earth Power
- Roost

Hydreigon is extremely threatening against most fatter teams, though it sometimes lacks in the speed department. It also acts as a check to Spectrier. Hydreigon on its own can bust holes in opposing teams. Roost is for longevity, and Earth Power is for Toxapex, Melmetal, Heatran, and some other ground weaknesses. Dark Pulse and Nasty Plot are self-explanatory.


Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- U-turn
- Roost
- Brave Bird
- Defog

Corviknight is an effective wall, and Swampert shores up its weakness to Cinderace. It's the defogger of the team, and a blanket physical wall. It's great against Excadrill, Landorus-Therian, Rillaboom, Melmetal, and non-SD Kartana. It also provides momentum for the team in U-turn.


THREATS

- Even Hydreigon sometimes isn't enough against the SubDisable and SubWisp sets especially, and if Rillaboom is down it can be a real struggle to deal with. Even if Rilla is up, Spectrier or its team can always burn it. Really one of this team's worst matchups.
Generally difficult to break. Stonewalls unboosted Rillaboom and Hydreigon. Blacephalon can deal with it, but it is weak to its attacks, so it can only even try to break it when assured of a KO.
- Dragonspam teams usually try to remove Corviknight as fast as possible. Without it, the team crumbles rather quickly to dragons(since Hydreigon isn't all that fast), although Zapdos-Galar can help defeat them to some degree.
+ - This core is extremely threatening, especially when you don't know (or don't think you know) the Landorus set. In the replay below, I misplayed ridiculously hard by A) forgetting the Landorus wasn't scarf and B) allowing Zapdos to die. I barely squeaked by with some Roost Hydreigon plays, but this core can be hard to deal with, especially when you misplay against it.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1260833036-inmmf787oxxo91fj7f8108l8p0ryiz0pw
- Clefable crumbles to Blacephalon, but late in the game, if Rillaboom and Blace are down, it can be difficult to break the physically defensive set. Unaware is also a problem, as Hydreigon can't even try to hit it with a +2 Earth Power. Smartly played, Clefable is easy to deal with, though.
- Hits like a truck and easily KO's most of the team. Offensive play is the only way to fight it.
- Broken. Setup and Specs can tear holes in the team, but play from Blace and Pert can help a lot. watch out for random scarf sets

Team Paste: https://pokepast.es/21bb4c4cb5798bd4

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and suggestions for improving the team!

 

[Smashburn]

Hi! I seems your seems has a couple issues, but outside of that it looks good.

1. Typically, Blacephalon doesn't run specs in the OU due to a lower speed tier in comparison to threats and many walls. Instead, use scarf, which boosts its speed and gives it the opportunity to get around threats when needed.

2. Change up Hydreigon for HDB or Leftovers. Hydreigon is destroyed by rocks and also hates a lack of passive healing if it is switching in a lot, as it does not get heal from Rillaboom's Grassy Terrain, nor can it recover outside of Roost with its LO. I recommend switching its set to something more defensive rather than offensive as it currently is.

3. Go with a less turn-out based Swampert, and try something with more offensive power even as a defensive mon. I notice that you have significant weakness to Dragon / Ground / Flying - types, so maybe going with a slower mixed set that has High Horsepower, Ice Beam, Flip Turn, and Rocks could help. This means you don't have to waste a move-slot on Protect for recovery, and since Hydreigon will be less susceptible to chip in many ways, you can make it a consistent switch out along with Corviknight for threats.

4. Try to replace something for Toxic, your team is offensively based but even a good offensive team utilizes some status to help take care of threats, which this team doesn't do. Corviknight gets access to U-Turn, which is good in terms of momentum is great, but it seems your team also needs a way to punish switching hard. Try Skarmory, it has reliable recovery from Roost, has Spikes (which Magearna hates), has Toxic (exactly what we are looking for), and even has the Brave Bird / Body Press that we are looking for.

5. Rillaboom is good as LO and all, however, as the main threat of the team I would argue it needs more offensive presence, or altogether should not be in this team. I recommend playing the classic Rillaband set, with Wood Hammer / Superpower / or High Horsepower in the last slot after Knock Off, Grassy Glide, and U-Turn.

6. Take Gapdos from a Scarf set to another set that can click more and build momentum. I find that Thunderus Kick + Brave Bird is a good combination. In the future I would consider changing it for another mon with a similar role who cover this team better, as Gapdos isn't the most reliable in this team, but for the moment you can try using it and see how the changes effect the team.

Just a take on the basic functions of Blacephalon:

It has an insanely high SpA stat of 401 when max invested on Timid, which gives its even considerably less powerful moves a lot of strength.
This means it can KO most threats it outspeeds with a little bit of chip on them, so having Spikes on Skarmory and Rocks on Swampert with these changes helps it get more consistent damage, and the aid of making Hydreigon our defogger opens us up to being up to switch more from threats.
Not to mention that more hazards and chip means more chances to get Rillaboom in for a KO, which creates a huge threat similar to Blacephalon, just with priority.

Hope you enjoy some of the changes in the team, tell me what you find!

 

[qwertyman888]

Your Skarmory idea is interesting, but the reason I picked Corviknight is for its role compression; it has Defog, both defensive stats are good, and it has momentum. Spikes are nice for the core, but I don't want to have to fall back on Hydreigon as a defogger. Which brings me into: why would I give up NP when with it, Drei becomes an insane breaker?

In addition, I addressed the scarf/specs blace thing. Without specs, It can't power past its walls. Without scarf, it can't outspeed some offensive mons. Personally, for my playstyle, I think Specs works better as a Pokemon that can come in, click Overheat/Shadow Ball, then fall back on the CorvPert core, rather than sweep.

 

[Smashburn]

Your Skarmory idea is interesting, but the reason I picked Corviknight is for its role compression; it has Defog, both defensive stats are good, and it has momentum. Spikes are nice for the core, but I don't want to have to fall back on Hydreigon as a defogger. Which brings me into: why would I give up NP when with it, Drei becomes an insane breaker?

In addition, I addressed the scarf/specs blace thing. Without specs, It can't power past its walls. Without scarf, it can't outspeed some offensive mons. Personally, for my playstyle, I think Specs works better as a Pokemon that can come in, click Overheat/Shadow Ball, then fall back on the CorvPert core, rather than sweep.

It's your call as to what you want for your team, so you do you. However, I would still consider switching up things so the threats of your team (aside from Blacephalon) have momentum and hit harder (Rillaband set suggestion) because Rillaboom is a threat that already has a bunch of threats that easily switch into it and being able to go out on U-Turn from it into another break IMO is better on this team.

 

[glava222]

Maybe something like a midground can be used, since blacephalon can be EV'd to get a speed increase instead of SPa increase, and if you slap a specs on that you get something that can be hard to revenge kill if it gets a kill with specs,while still hitting harder than scarf. this also allows you to dump some points in special defense, since blace actually has some nice resists in fairy,poison,steel,fire,ice. Maybe swap overheat for mind blown if you miss the power. This was a bit of a tangent, but may be something to consider

 

[Smashburn]

Maybe something like a midground can be used, since blacephalon can be EV'd to get a speed increase instead of SPa increase, and if you slap a specs on that you get something that can be hard to revenge kill if it gets a kill with specs,while still hitting harder than scarf. this also allows you to dump some points in special defense, since blace actually has some nice resists in fairy,poison,steel,fire,ice. Maybe swap overheat for mind blown if you miss the power. This was a bit of a tangent, but may be something to consider

That's a good idea, it can hit hard while still picking up momentum that way. Plus, you're right about the resists, it makes for a nice Clef killer.