Okay so ubers is probably my favorite tier. It is without a doubt my best tier and previous to ORAS, I was doing great with a xy ubers team. Then ORAS dropped and I found that my succesful, battle hardened team I had perfected the use of was frankly, not very good at all anymore. I realized that with the release of primal kyogre and groudon, and the addition of some megas such as mega salamence, I would need to completely start over from scratch and create a whole new team. I decided I would start with a pokemon that isn't seen much in ubers but is without a doubt fantastic in the current metagame. That pokemon was skarmory.
Skarmory is fantastic in the ORAS ubers meta for a variety of reasons. First of all, I built my team In the middle of the era of terror known as "The Age of Mega Rayquaza." This monster was absolutely terrifying and if there was anything I wanted shut down and checked or even countered, it was mega rayquaza. The set that everybody was running at the time on mega ray was swords dance, extreme speed, earthquake, and dragon ascent with a life orb. This set had incredible coverage and if given the opportunity to set up a swords dance, it was almost always game. Mega rayquaza was a huge problem and I still thank God that thing got banned so quickly. However, skarmory was the one pokemon I actually saw "countering" mega rayquaza. Or at least switching in on it. skarm's incredible physical bulk and excellent typing make it perfect for walling rayquaza. It can't hit you with eq, e-speed will do nothing even after a swords dance, and a non boosted dragon ascent won't even do much. Even if they want to set up an SD on your switch, the +2 dragon ascent won't even do half. So that alone immediately earned skarm the first spot on my team. Now obviously skarmory's only viability is as a physical wall so I chose the standard spread for a OU skarmory.
Nature: Impish
Item: Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EV's: 252 HP, 252 Def, 4 Sp Def.
The move spread was a little more tricky. Skarmory was an important member of my team, I wanted to use it to the best of it's ability. After a little consideration and a little testing, I decided on the following moveset.
Whirlwind
Roost
Brave Bird
Toxic
Now this set obviously has flaws, but since the function of skarmory was to completely wall mega ray, and other physical set up sweepers like e-killer arceus, and mega salamence. Whirlwind to get them out if the set up gets out of hand, Roost for recovery, Brave bird so i'm not a sitting duck and so skarm can dent threats like deoxys attack and genesect. The last move slot was hard. I wanted a spinner on my team and when you see what the rest of my team is, you will realize it was either my arceus who would need to carry defog, or skarmory who would have to carry it. I didn't want a support set on arceus so that would mean either defog on skarmory, or nothing. I finally decided on Toxic over Defog on skarmory simple because I wanted to not only be able to stop the physical sweepers, I wanted to cripple them as well. Toxic also allows me to be a bigger threat and annoyance for lugia if it isn't packing sub and giratina-o if it isn't rest. Now to build the rest of my team around skarmory.
Primal groudon is a complete monster. There is literally absolutely no reason to not put it on your team. I was new to ORAS ubers like all the other ubers players and I naturally, just wanted to try him out. I already knew I needed a stealth rocker so I looked up some primal don sets with stealth rock on him. The set I liked the most was the specially defensive set. Just because the ev spread allows groudon to do things I never thought possible with him. He can completely wall primal kyogre if he switches in to set up sun and he takes special hits so well. He has great physical bulk as well so he can easily take physical hits too. The set also went well with my skarmory since I already had a physical wall so it is much better for my team if groudon can take special hits well. It is just a super bulky set that almost always gets rocks up and does a great job in ubers.
Nature: Careful
Item: Red Orb
Ability: Primordial Sun
EV's 252 HP, 4 Atk, 248 Sp Def, 4 Spd.
Moveset
Stealth Rock
Precipice Blades
Rock Slide
Toxic
Now that I had primal groudon, I wanted to try out the other primal Kyogre.
Primal Kyogre is easily the best check from Primal Groudon. If you switch in and set up the rain, They have to switch out, or get smacked in the face with a 4x effective stab rain boosted origin pulse and just die. I love kyogre as a pokemon and slapped it on my team because of the exact reason above. If it switches in on Groudon, It immediately creates a problem for your opponent and I love that. I just went with the standard power set for Kyogre.
Nature: Modest
Item: Blue Orb
Ability: Primordial Sea
Ev's 4 HP, 252 Sp Atk, 252 Spd
The moveset is also pretty straightforward but I suppose a few things are worth explaining.
Origin Pulse
Thunder
Ice Beam
Calm mind
Calm mind is very important on this set simply because if it gets the chance to switch in, Sp Def primal groudon, (The set above) completely walls it. You can only hit it with ice beam and an unboosted ice beam does a little over a quarter. But if you have calm mind, you can predict the switch and hit them with a nice boosted calm mind. Now all of a sudden, you are close to 2HKOing them with rocks up. If you continue to predict in this way, it won't be long before primal groudon can't even switch in at all. This set is fun and very potent in the ubers meta. Now for member four of my team.
Just like primal groudon, there is pretty much no reason at all to not put a normal arceus on your team. This thing is so diverse and good. Whenever I see an arceus on a team, I always assume it is normal until it is revealed simply because normal type arceus is just that common.I normally really like it when people use other arceus forms besides normal partially since it is creative and partially because I usually have an easier time with the other forms. But with this team, I am always very happy when I see a normal type arceus not only because I have a skarmory, but because of this arceus set right here. This set is easily the weirdest set I have on this team or have ever run on a team. It kind of works as a anti e-killer/sweeper and it is really fun to catch people off guard with. Yes it is somewhat gimmicky, and some people might even call it outright bad. But I have actually had great success with this set and pulled out many games I would have easily lost with a standard arceus set. Including the guy who is currently No.1 on the Ubers ladder.
Nature: Adamant
Item: Silk Scarf
Ability: Multitype
EV's 252 HP, 252 Atk, 4 def.
Moveset
Extreme Speed
Swords Dance
Will-O-Wisp
Recover
Now before you blow up in my face, let me explain. Yes, I know, I know, I KNOW! This set gets completely walled by Giratina and other ghost types. But as I said earlier, they don't know that. This set's job is to catch the opposing player off guard and surprise them with a late game sweep. The 252 HP investment makes this thing extremely bulky and It can take hits with ease and set up with an swords dance and do some serious work. Will-O-Wisp is what makes this set. Will-O-Wisp allows me to beat apposing e-killer arceus, mega salamence, and it even allows me to beat that annoying physically bulky yveltal that would normally be able to easily beat you one on one. All you have to do is Will-O-Wisp it and then even if Arceus has an SD up, Foul play doesn't do half even with the highest roll. Recover is also fantastic because it allows you to set up in a burnt pokemon's face and sweep their team. But seriously, watch out for those giratinas. You have to play this set safe and carefully, but if played correctly, it really comes through. If you don't want to be completely walled by ghosts, you can replace one of the moves like recover or will-o-wisp for shadow force of shadow claw or simply take out the attacking aspect of the arceus and make it a wallceus or just a bulky spread but this is the set that I have on this team and it has worked out well for me. Now for the next member of my team. A terror that is slowly being recognized as one of the best sweepers in ubers.
Ok just kidding but mega rayquaza was the original member of my team but after it got banned, I strugged to fill in the hole that was left as a result of it's absence. I used normal rayquaza for a while, but it just wasn't the same and didn't do half the work mega rayquaza pulled off. I knew I had access to a new mega now that rayquaza didn't fill the slot anymore. Then after a while, I finally came to my senses and popped mega salamence on my team.
Mega salamence is strong, mega salamence is extremely bulky, mega salamence has a super good set up move, mega salamence has amazing coverage so it can take down every counter, mega salamence is extremely good in ubers. I think we will all carry in that dark corner of our minds the time when mega salamence was allowed in OU. The thing was unstoppable, it had to go. It was so bulky, it hit so hard, we all knew it was going to go immediately to ubers when the game came out. So the question was, how good was it going to be in ubers with all of that heavy hitting and sweeping competition. The answer to that question? Yes it is good. Very good. There is a distinct difference between mega salamence and the other ubers set up sweepers. Mega salamence is very physically fat. It packs intimidate. It sets up on stuff that people should never ever be able to set up on. You have to play very carefully if your opponent has one of these on deck. You wanna kill that pokemon with your e-killer? Maybe you should rethink that. Because if you do, mega mence comes in and intimdates you and sets up all over you and possibly sweeps your team. This thing also hits like a truck. If you aren't a pokemon that is built for bulky, you are almost certainly not living a +1 Aerilate Return from this monster. And it has earthquake for like everything that resists it's flying type return... I didn't really know what to run for EV's so I just ran a fairly standard but very bulky spread and set that works very well for both taking hits, and for sweeping.
Nature: Jolly
Item: Salamencite
Ability: Aerilate (Intimidate before mega evolving)
EV's: 128 HP, 244 Atk, 136 Spd.
Moveset
Return
Earthquake
Dragon Dance
Roost
Note: Make sure you have max happiness if you are running Return. Or, if you want to catch ditto's off guard, you could run Frustration and then set the happiness to 0. But I have seen a ditto user with 0 happiness to catch people who use Frustration so just do whichever you feel like using. You can also swap out Earthquake for Refresh since Refresh mega mence can be really fun and powerful and get extra sweeps in certain situations. Now I only had one more slot to fill. I decided I wanted it to be a special pokemon since I my only special attacker was Kyogre. It didn't take me long to decide.
Yep, it's this thing again. Xerneas is another pokemon in ubers that you lost pretty much nothing by putting on your team. This thing is a very scary presence to have on your team. Now that primal groudon does a better job with checking it, it isn't quite as scary as it was in XY but geo xern is still absolutely nothing to play with. I have the standard moveset and spread on this because you don't really need to do anything special with geo xern. You just get it in there and click geomancy and try to win the game. It is actually pretty broken and I may be in favor of a ban of power herb or something that makes this thing less potent. But that has nothing to do with this.
Nature: Modest
Item: Power Herb
Ability: Fairy Aura
EV's 104 HP, 32 Def, 252 Sp Atk, 120 Spd.
Moveset
Geomancy
Moonblast
Thunder
Focus Blast
So that is the team. I can tell you a little how it works and how I have used it. The first purpose of the team is to get up rocks to break sashed mons and to take out certain pokemon's ability to counter your sweepers. You should keep skarm healthy until it is ready to switch in to counter one of the physical sweepers it is designed to counter. When you switch it in, you can predict them to switch and whirlwind and shuffle their team through the rocks a little or you can toxic and neutralize the sweeper. When you switch in skarm, make sure you don't lose momentum by making poor plays and not anticipating a defog user such as giratina or one of the lati twins to come in and trying to defog your rocks away. People do that quite a bit. Be prepared for it. The general plan of this team is break the early checks and counters to the team with rocks and to force switches with your pivots like primal groudon and skarm to get free damage. You can also threaten their team by setting up with one of your three sweepers and force them to go out and get one of their bulky pokemon chunked or be swept and then sweep with one of your other sweepers late game after you weaken their team up enough. That weird arceus is always my wild card and make sure you figure out a good time to switch it in and surprise your opponent. Thank you so much for reading my RMT mini novel and I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to take the team and even modify it to what you want to do with it. Make sure to leave suggestions of how you think this team could be better or what you liked or tell me any mistakes I did in making this thread. This is the first RMT I did and i'm sure there will be some errors somewhere in it. I always love healthy criticism as it only helps me get better at the Ubers metagame. Have a great rest of the day,
-Andrew (Andyboy500)
Skarmory is fantastic in the ORAS ubers meta for a variety of reasons. First of all, I built my team In the middle of the era of terror known as "The Age of Mega Rayquaza." This monster was absolutely terrifying and if there was anything I wanted shut down and checked or even countered, it was mega rayquaza. The set that everybody was running at the time on mega ray was swords dance, extreme speed, earthquake, and dragon ascent with a life orb. This set had incredible coverage and if given the opportunity to set up a swords dance, it was almost always game. Mega rayquaza was a huge problem and I still thank God that thing got banned so quickly. However, skarmory was the one pokemon I actually saw "countering" mega rayquaza. Or at least switching in on it. skarm's incredible physical bulk and excellent typing make it perfect for walling rayquaza. It can't hit you with eq, e-speed will do nothing even after a swords dance, and a non boosted dragon ascent won't even do much. Even if they want to set up an SD on your switch, the +2 dragon ascent won't even do half. So that alone immediately earned skarm the first spot on my team. Now obviously skarmory's only viability is as a physical wall so I chose the standard spread for a OU skarmory.
Nature: Impish
Item: Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EV's: 252 HP, 252 Def, 4 Sp Def.
The move spread was a little more tricky. Skarmory was an important member of my team, I wanted to use it to the best of it's ability. After a little consideration and a little testing, I decided on the following moveset.
Whirlwind
Roost
Brave Bird
Toxic
Now this set obviously has flaws, but since the function of skarmory was to completely wall mega ray, and other physical set up sweepers like e-killer arceus, and mega salamence. Whirlwind to get them out if the set up gets out of hand, Roost for recovery, Brave bird so i'm not a sitting duck and so skarm can dent threats like deoxys attack and genesect. The last move slot was hard. I wanted a spinner on my team and when you see what the rest of my team is, you will realize it was either my arceus who would need to carry defog, or skarmory who would have to carry it. I didn't want a support set on arceus so that would mean either defog on skarmory, or nothing. I finally decided on Toxic over Defog on skarmory simple because I wanted to not only be able to stop the physical sweepers, I wanted to cripple them as well. Toxic also allows me to be a bigger threat and annoyance for lugia if it isn't packing sub and giratina-o if it isn't rest. Now to build the rest of my team around skarmory.
Primal groudon is a complete monster. There is literally absolutely no reason to not put it on your team. I was new to ORAS ubers like all the other ubers players and I naturally, just wanted to try him out. I already knew I needed a stealth rocker so I looked up some primal don sets with stealth rock on him. The set I liked the most was the specially defensive set. Just because the ev spread allows groudon to do things I never thought possible with him. He can completely wall primal kyogre if he switches in to set up sun and he takes special hits so well. He has great physical bulk as well so he can easily take physical hits too. The set also went well with my skarmory since I already had a physical wall so it is much better for my team if groudon can take special hits well. It is just a super bulky set that almost always gets rocks up and does a great job in ubers.
Nature: Careful
Item: Red Orb
Ability: Primordial Sun
EV's 252 HP, 4 Atk, 248 Sp Def, 4 Spd.
Moveset
Stealth Rock
Precipice Blades
Rock Slide
Toxic
Now that I had primal groudon, I wanted to try out the other primal Kyogre.
Primal Kyogre is easily the best check from Primal Groudon. If you switch in and set up the rain, They have to switch out, or get smacked in the face with a 4x effective stab rain boosted origin pulse and just die. I love kyogre as a pokemon and slapped it on my team because of the exact reason above. If it switches in on Groudon, It immediately creates a problem for your opponent and I love that. I just went with the standard power set for Kyogre.
Nature: Modest
Item: Blue Orb
Ability: Primordial Sea
Ev's 4 HP, 252 Sp Atk, 252 Spd
The moveset is also pretty straightforward but I suppose a few things are worth explaining.
Origin Pulse
Thunder
Ice Beam
Calm mind
Calm mind is very important on this set simply because if it gets the chance to switch in, Sp Def primal groudon, (The set above) completely walls it. You can only hit it with ice beam and an unboosted ice beam does a little over a quarter. But if you have calm mind, you can predict the switch and hit them with a nice boosted calm mind. Now all of a sudden, you are close to 2HKOing them with rocks up. If you continue to predict in this way, it won't be long before primal groudon can't even switch in at all. This set is fun and very potent in the ubers meta. Now for member four of my team.
Just like primal groudon, there is pretty much no reason at all to not put a normal arceus on your team. This thing is so diverse and good. Whenever I see an arceus on a team, I always assume it is normal until it is revealed simply because normal type arceus is just that common.I normally really like it when people use other arceus forms besides normal partially since it is creative and partially because I usually have an easier time with the other forms. But with this team, I am always very happy when I see a normal type arceus not only because I have a skarmory, but because of this arceus set right here. This set is easily the weirdest set I have on this team or have ever run on a team. It kind of works as a anti e-killer/sweeper and it is really fun to catch people off guard with. Yes it is somewhat gimmicky, and some people might even call it outright bad. But I have actually had great success with this set and pulled out many games I would have easily lost with a standard arceus set. Including the guy who is currently No.1 on the Ubers ladder.
Nature: Adamant
Item: Silk Scarf
Ability: Multitype
EV's 252 HP, 252 Atk, 4 def.
Moveset
Extreme Speed
Swords Dance
Will-O-Wisp
Recover
Now before you blow up in my face, let me explain. Yes, I know, I know, I KNOW! This set gets completely walled by Giratina and other ghost types. But as I said earlier, they don't know that. This set's job is to catch the opposing player off guard and surprise them with a late game sweep. The 252 HP investment makes this thing extremely bulky and It can take hits with ease and set up with an swords dance and do some serious work. Will-O-Wisp is what makes this set. Will-O-Wisp allows me to beat apposing e-killer arceus, mega salamence, and it even allows me to beat that annoying physically bulky yveltal that would normally be able to easily beat you one on one. All you have to do is Will-O-Wisp it and then even if Arceus has an SD up, Foul play doesn't do half even with the highest roll. Recover is also fantastic because it allows you to set up in a burnt pokemon's face and sweep their team. But seriously, watch out for those giratinas. You have to play this set safe and carefully, but if played correctly, it really comes through. If you don't want to be completely walled by ghosts, you can replace one of the moves like recover or will-o-wisp for shadow force of shadow claw or simply take out the attacking aspect of the arceus and make it a wallceus or just a bulky spread but this is the set that I have on this team and it has worked out well for me. Now for the next member of my team. A terror that is slowly being recognized as one of the best sweepers in ubers.
Ok just kidding but mega rayquaza was the original member of my team but after it got banned, I strugged to fill in the hole that was left as a result of it's absence. I used normal rayquaza for a while, but it just wasn't the same and didn't do half the work mega rayquaza pulled off. I knew I had access to a new mega now that rayquaza didn't fill the slot anymore. Then after a while, I finally came to my senses and popped mega salamence on my team.
Mega salamence is strong, mega salamence is extremely bulky, mega salamence has a super good set up move, mega salamence has amazing coverage so it can take down every counter, mega salamence is extremely good in ubers. I think we will all carry in that dark corner of our minds the time when mega salamence was allowed in OU. The thing was unstoppable, it had to go. It was so bulky, it hit so hard, we all knew it was going to go immediately to ubers when the game came out. So the question was, how good was it going to be in ubers with all of that heavy hitting and sweeping competition. The answer to that question? Yes it is good. Very good. There is a distinct difference between mega salamence and the other ubers set up sweepers. Mega salamence is very physically fat. It packs intimidate. It sets up on stuff that people should never ever be able to set up on. You have to play very carefully if your opponent has one of these on deck. You wanna kill that pokemon with your e-killer? Maybe you should rethink that. Because if you do, mega mence comes in and intimdates you and sets up all over you and possibly sweeps your team. This thing also hits like a truck. If you aren't a pokemon that is built for bulky, you are almost certainly not living a +1 Aerilate Return from this monster. And it has earthquake for like everything that resists it's flying type return... I didn't really know what to run for EV's so I just ran a fairly standard but very bulky spread and set that works very well for both taking hits, and for sweeping.
Nature: Jolly
Item: Salamencite
Ability: Aerilate (Intimidate before mega evolving)
EV's: 128 HP, 244 Atk, 136 Spd.
Moveset
Return
Earthquake
Dragon Dance
Roost
Note: Make sure you have max happiness if you are running Return. Or, if you want to catch ditto's off guard, you could run Frustration and then set the happiness to 0. But I have seen a ditto user with 0 happiness to catch people who use Frustration so just do whichever you feel like using. You can also swap out Earthquake for Refresh since Refresh mega mence can be really fun and powerful and get extra sweeps in certain situations. Now I only had one more slot to fill. I decided I wanted it to be a special pokemon since I my only special attacker was Kyogre. It didn't take me long to decide.
Yep, it's this thing again. Xerneas is another pokemon in ubers that you lost pretty much nothing by putting on your team. This thing is a very scary presence to have on your team. Now that primal groudon does a better job with checking it, it isn't quite as scary as it was in XY but geo xern is still absolutely nothing to play with. I have the standard moveset and spread on this because you don't really need to do anything special with geo xern. You just get it in there and click geomancy and try to win the game. It is actually pretty broken and I may be in favor of a ban of power herb or something that makes this thing less potent. But that has nothing to do with this.
Nature: Modest
Item: Power Herb
Ability: Fairy Aura
EV's 104 HP, 32 Def, 252 Sp Atk, 120 Spd.
Moveset
Geomancy
Moonblast
Thunder
Focus Blast
So that is the team. I can tell you a little how it works and how I have used it. The first purpose of the team is to get up rocks to break sashed mons and to take out certain pokemon's ability to counter your sweepers. You should keep skarm healthy until it is ready to switch in to counter one of the physical sweepers it is designed to counter. When you switch it in, you can predict them to switch and whirlwind and shuffle their team through the rocks a little or you can toxic and neutralize the sweeper. When you switch in skarm, make sure you don't lose momentum by making poor plays and not anticipating a defog user such as giratina or one of the lati twins to come in and trying to defog your rocks away. People do that quite a bit. Be prepared for it. The general plan of this team is break the early checks and counters to the team with rocks and to force switches with your pivots like primal groudon and skarm to get free damage. You can also threaten their team by setting up with one of your three sweepers and force them to go out and get one of their bulky pokemon chunked or be swept and then sweep with one of your other sweepers late game after you weaken their team up enough. That weird arceus is always my wild card and make sure you figure out a good time to switch it in and surprise your opponent. Thank you so much for reading my RMT mini novel and I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to take the team and even modify it to what you want to do with it. Make sure to leave suggestions of how you think this team could be better or what you liked or tell me any mistakes I did in making this thread. This is the first RMT I did and i'm sure there will be some errors somewhere in it. I always love healthy criticism as it only helps me get better at the Ubers metagame. Have a great rest of the day,
-Andrew (Andyboy500)
