SM UU Silvally and The Arctic Wind

[Estarossa]

Hi everyone, recently for the sableye suspect test I tried out this team, and while I really enjoyed playing it I just slightly failed to meet reqs (only managed 80.9% GXE), and would really appreciate some help to try and improve this team, as I would quite like to keep using it sometimes.

Vincune is one of my favourite pokemon, and after trying it in passing I realised how nicely silvally can support it by offering it set up opportunities with parting shot! The team was therefore built around trying to support this combination, and I will explain the team-building process below.

The Team

https://pokepast.es/4c8e22fa567934ed​

Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpD / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Scald
- Substitute
- Protect

As explained, I started with a vincune set, as this was what I wanted to build the team around. It offers a nice win-con against a lot of teams, and I massively prefer it to crocune due to a number of reasons, most importantly but not limited to the prevalence of amoongus, outspeeding togekiss, being able to better pp stall, not having to rely on rest-talk rng and insurance against crits.

Due to the lack of rest however, vincune hates being statused. In general, suicune also has a bad matchup against latias, celebi, taunt hydreigon, electric types, opposing suicune's with more pp, and water absorb pokemon that can pp stall it (so mantine with haze, jellicent with taunt, but not volcanion or seismitoad), and toxicroak. Therefore the rest of the team is built around trying to help deal with these matchups.

Silvally-Steel @ Steel Memory
Ability: RKS System
EVs: 252 HP / 240 SpD / 16 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flamethrower
- Defog
- Toxic
- Parting Shot

Silvally was chosen as explained to support vincune with parting shot, allowing it opportunities to set up substitutes, and providing it opportunities it might not otherwise be able to take advantage of, such as setting up a substitute directly against an amoongus without needing a calm mind to stop it breaking substitute first, and essentially undoing the specs boost on a primarina making it very set-up-able on, even more so against defensive primarinas.

Parting shot is also just generally a nice option for punishing switches, as apart from bisharp which must be watched out for as it ends up at +3 attack after a parting shot, it acts as an even better version of u-turn, and can help offer recovery opportunities or set up opportunities to the rest of the team.16 Speed EVs + Flamethrower ensure silvally outspeeds and allows it to act as a scizor check.

Toxic allows it to put enemies, on a timer and allows silvally to act as a latias check, and lets vincune beat things that are toxic'd that it would normally struggle to, such as electrics and latias. Silvally was chosen to be the teams defogger at start, as although it doesn't beat a lot of rockers, it can find opportunities to come in and defog thanks to it's typing, and offers nice role compression onto silvally.

Toxic can also help silvally deal with celebi (even though it has natural cure) when coupled with flamethrower, as silvally takes very little from any non (z-) earthpower hits, with even +2 hidden power fire only being a 3hko, as shown by the calcs below. This is however not intended to be the only way of dealing with either options on the team.

+2 252 SpA Celebi Shattered Psyche (175 BP) vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Silvally-Steel: 178-210 (45.1 - 53.2%) -- 35.5% chance to 2HKO
+2 252 SpA Celebi Shattered Psyche (175 BP) vs. 252 HP / 240+ SpD Silvally-Steel: 178-210 (45.1 - 53.2%) -- 35.5% chance to 2HKO
0 SpA Silvally-Steel Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Celebi: 124-148 (36.3 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Sylveon @ Leftovers
Ability: Pixilate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Heal Bell
- Hyper Voice
- Wish
- Protect

At this point, as both vincune and silvally appreciate cleric support due to silvally's lack of recovery and vincune hating status, so sylveon was a natural choice, as it gave a much needed fairy type for hydreigon and offered fatter wishes than florges which silvally would appreciate. It's fairy typing also paired well with silvally, resisting the fighting type hits silvally hates.

Celebi @ Psychium Z
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Giga Drain
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Nasty Plot

I now needed an option that would beat opposing suicunes, and deal with bulky water absorb pokemon. Celebi offered this position, and also provided stall matchup thanks to the nasty plot z-psychic set, since a +4 z-psychic has a 25% chance to OHKO blissey after rocks, and natural cure lets it deal with any status it might accrue.

HP Fire was run in order to not be stopped by scizors, and to hit options like klefki as hard as possible, dazzling gleam was an option but I let my next pokemon + silvally + sylveon try to deal with hydreigon and latias instead.

Aerodactyl-Mega @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Pursuit
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Roost

I now needed a pursuit trapper of some kind to help try and trap celebi and latias for vincune. Noticing that the team was also fairly slow so far, I chose Mega-aerodactyl to fill this role, as it would be able to help outspeed nasty plot infernape also, and be able to outspeed and revenge kill options like cobalion/terrakion too, and offered a ground immunity.

Mega-aerodactyl however isn't always the most reliable pursuit trapper if the enemy decides to stay in, but it is more able to swap in on celebi than options such as krook. The next pokemon helps with this slightly however.

M-aero also offers a nice answer to moltres and is able to trap beedrill which would otherwise freely run through this team. Earthquake was chosen in order to stop options like empoleon from freely swapping in, and to help kill infernape / cobalion / terrakion.

Roost was chosen in fourth, for the recovery to be able to continue checking options like moltres during the match, and to allow recovery on predicted swaps due to silvally being the only defogger on team. Crunch was an option I considered using in fourth for when latias / celebi decide to stay in, but I decided to stick with roost as it felt more useful and didn't put me in 50/50s with the enemy swapping on my crunches.

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 176 SpD
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Slack Off
- Whirlwind

I still needed a rocker at this point. Hippowdon was a natural choice as it provided sandstorm support to help aerodactyl pursuit trap by increasing its special defence, while providing a solid answer to electric types, especially manectric. While sandstorm does briefly negate the effects of leftovers for sylveon and suicune, the added help to trapping for aerodactyl and extra chip on important enemies important enough to run sand stream over sand force.

It also helped deal with options like cobalion and to a lesser extent terrakion, while being able to sponge hits from scizor and beedrill and use them as recovery opportunities / rock opportunities if possible.

Whirlwind was chosen in fourth to prevent enemy set up and for use on predicted swaps in order to gain extra rocks chip, as well as to provide a method of disrupting enemy wish passing.

Threatlist

Now that I've explained the teambuilding process, I will briefly talk about some of the threats I've found to the team.

- Naturally a threat to any team not running altaria or chesnaught. Sylveon is able to survive a banded crabhammer and OHKO it back, and celebi can outsped it and kill with giga drain, but when offered a free swap in against aero or hippo, it becomes a matter of prediction. It can also come in against suicune if feeling brazen, and if scald doesn't burn cause problems. However a crawdaunt locked into aqua jet or crabhammer does offer a sub opportunity for suicune.

- While every single pokemon on the team bar silvally is able to severely hurt terrakion, each of either requires chip or set up to actually kill it from full. If it comes in on silvally without parting shot being used, it is likely to claim at least one pokemon. On the other hand it finds it very difficult to come in for free, and can never come in while suicune is behind a substitute, and if it gets chipped becomes a lot easier to deal with. Celebi is also always capable of living a banded stone edge / z-stone edge as long as it has above 85% hp, and is able of recovering a lot of that hp back with a giga drain after.

- This one is mainly a threat in that it's answer depends on what set it's running. DD sets are fairly easily taken care of by sylveon, but beat celebi, while can throw its z move at an SD haxorus and beat it, while sylveon has only a 50% chance of surviving a +2 pjab. It can find some difficulty coming in, since if it comes in on silvally it gets parting shotted, and on hippo it gets whirlwinded, but if it comes in on suicune it can be very risky to try and fish for a burn with scald often forcing you to just go sylveon immediately. If it can be forced to outrage though, then it's easily dealt with by sylveon while locked into its move.


Some other pokemon like altaria and NP infernape can be fairly threatening to the team, but as long as hippowdon remains healthy it can whirlwind altaria out and members of the team are able to make it hard for altaria, since sylveon beats a +0 altaria, and silvally can parting shot on it, while aero outspeeds a +1 altaria and celebi can use its z move vs it. Infernape is threatening if it comes in on sylveon or silvally for free on a safe entry, but it can't swap in safely on silvally due to parting shot, gets 2hkoed by hyper voice so has to come in on sylveon safely, and finds no set up opportunities on anything else, and aero can always revenge kill it.

Other pokemon like specs primarina can be a bit threatening, but celebi is able to offensively check it, and silvally is able to parting shot on it and have vincune use it as a set up opportunity.

Thanks

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Thank you for reading up to this point, and for any potential help offered afterwards :)

 

[Sickist]

Hi, Estarossa. It's me, your friend and fellow UU Brain Teasers host, Sickist. Interesting team you have here, especially the Steelvally making an appearance, as it is something I haven't seriously used since before Mega Venusaur dropped. For each change, I'll describe why I made the change, and what the change does for your team overall. I've put a good 2 hours into your team, trying to perfect it as much as I could without basically rebuilding your team, and as this is written, I'll have another 2-3 hours poured into this rate's formatting, so I seriously hope you enjoy this rate, otherwise, I might cry.

>>--Major Changes---->

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While Celebi's stallbreaking potential was nice, there were other glaring flaws that needed patched here. Nasty Plot Infernape in particular was troublesome, as with some chip, +2 Vacuum Wave would annihilate it. The team also really needed a way to actually be immune to Ground attacks, but that didn't fold over to Rock type coverage and Stealth Rocks. Latias can still come in and handle fatter waters due to Heal Bell and Wish Support from Sylveon, as well as take stall for the most part. Latias also comes in on most ground types, isn't weak to rocks and rock type coverage, and can help revenge kill Swords Dance Haxorus, SD and Banded Terrakion, and Crawdaunt, which all of these have you pointed your team as being weak to.

Set + Description

Latias @ Electrium Z
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder
- Psyshock
- Calm Mind
- Draco Meteor

This was the set of best fit for the roles Latias needed to play. The team needed a General Win-con, a Stall-breaker to replace Celebi, as well as a way to lure Scizor and other fat Steel types. Electrium+Thunder basically hits every steel type in the tier for either super effective or neutral damage, barring Mega Steelix. Psyshock+Calm Mind help Latias break through Stall, and Draco Meteor hits Quagsire for a solid 2HKO, due to Unaware ignoring the Special Attack drops. Latias also appreciates the support from Sylveon's Wish and Heal Bell, and can check Nasty Plot Infernape for the team.

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As you mentioned, the team was REALLY weak to Terrakion, as you barely struggled to KO it, let alone switch into it. Hippowdon's sand was also Counterproductive, as it canceled Suicune's leftovers, which hinders it. The team also really struggled with Mixed Life Orb Zeraora, as it's near perfect coverage sliced through this team, with Grass Knot 2HKO'ing Hippowdon. The team also didn't particularly like Toxic Spikes. All of these issues are fixed for the most part by slotting in Nidoqueen over Hippowdon. Nidoqueen checks Terrakion, Zeraora, as well as the majority of what Hippowdon checked, but you struggle a little bit more with Mega Aerodactyl. It also doesn't summon the abrasive sand, which hindered your Suicune, which is always an added bonus. Nidoqueen also absorbs Toxic Spikes for your team, so that's also another benefit Nidoqueen adds.

Set + Description

Nidoqueen @ Black Sludge
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 HP / 108 Def / 72 SpD / 76 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic Spikes
- Sludge Wave
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam

You might notice something on first glance about this set: It's not carrying Stealth Rock. In the time I spent working on this, I made several revisions, with Rocks on Nidoqueen being one of them. After shifting around a few more times, I came to the conclusion that Toxic Spikes were of better use on Nidoqueen, functioning quite well with Calm Mind+Protect Suicune. The rest of the set should be pretty standard, with the Earth Power and Sludge Wave pressuring things like Mega Manectric, Mega Altaria, Primarina, and nailing Gligar with Ice Beam.

>>--Minor Changes---->

- Roost --> Stealth Rock

With Nidoqueen holding Toxic Spikes, you needed a Stealth Rocker. Mega Aerodactyl can do this, at the cost of Roost, however. The reason I chose to keep Pursuit is to help with the Latias Matchup, as compared to something like the Moltres Matchup, which is already helped simply by Mega Aerodactyl existing, as well as Latias being on the build to revenge kill it. You also have Wish support from Sylveon to keep Aerodactyl healthy, if need be, as well.

>>--Importable and Closing Thoughts---->

Alright, as far as the new team is concerned, the only things you have to watch out for now is still Crawdaunt (at least switching into it), and trying to get around spdef Pyukumuku could prove annoying. Overall, the team is solid against pretty much anything else. Click the sprites below to get the importable with the new changes. I hope you enjoy the changes, and I wish you the best of luck in whatever you do, friend!