Resource SV ZU Sample Teams

[estra]

(Inspired by SV PU Sample Teams thread)

art by sinnabyss

Hello and welcome to the SV ZU Sample Teams! This thread's goal is to provide good and easy to use teams for players unfamiliar with the metagame. This is a community driven project, so all submissions are appreciated!

Posting Guidelines & Format

- When submitting a team, if possible, add a description to it, it's not mandatory to do that but it helps people new to the tier to understand how to use it and the logic behind, in case they want to use it as inspiration for their own build. You can use the code below to facilitate.

Team paste: https://pokepast.es/
Short description explaining EVs (3-5 lines): (Leave this in blank if all the EVs are standard)

- Sample teams should be representative of the metagame. As such, teams with very niche Pokemon or sets have a lesser chance of becoming samples. Also, don't submit teams with unranked Pokemon.

- Not a posting guideline, but if there is any questions towards the teams currently posted, or if you wanna submit a team and are unsure, feel free to reach out to me or sleid for any clarifications you need or concerns you have towards the project.

Current Teams


https://pokepast.es/e3f5a5551542d940 - Tera Blast Flying Magneton Balance by FlamPoke


https://pokepast.es/0d2386e64d5f4635 - Specs Magneton + Brute Bonnet BO by Sputnik


https://pokepast.es/28bc357db48f353b - Bulk Up Braviary Balance by FlamPoke


https://pokepast.es/41695a1fbc7e8a10 - Fat Balance by Inferno Monferno


https://pokepast.es/f7a496d6ac90be2b - LO Virizion Bulky Offense by sinnabyss


https://pokepast.es/45353893680a65a6 - Sash Lycanroc HO by sleid

Old Samples (Archive)

https://pokepast.es/47a841fc6ce06a4c - Fat Balance by yo cho - archived at 12/1/2024

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Submissions are currently: CLOSED​

 

[FlamPoke]

Submitting two teams for samples!

P2 PivotSpam BO



A PivotSpam team I built pre-shifts during ZUPL and ended up using in UMPL against Baddy. Big fan of Choice Scarf Adamant Floatzel as a breaker and pivot, along with bulky Decidueye-Hisui. P2 on this type of team is basically unkillable.

EV Breakdown

EV Spread Breakdown:
Decid is pretty straightforward, max HP and some SpDef for stuff like Mesprit and Mismagius. EnoughbSpeed for up to Modest Vikavolt.
Honchkrow has enough Speed to creep Adamant Bonnet/Hecid and the bulk is extra but also helps to take a Scarf Passimian CC 81% of the time.
Magneton creeps Eggy-A (and stuff that creeps that like bulky Hecid).
Mesprit creeps Adamant Hecid/Honchkrow.
P2 creeps Sandaconda/Ava-H/Glastrier type of mons while still maintaining SpDef bulk for opposing Typhlosion/Charizard/Clawitzer.

Grassy Terrain


Slight modification of the team I used in UMPL against OBB, but still a fairly standard Grassy Terrain structure overall. Farigiraf is great against opposing offense and rounds the team out nicely.

EV Breakdown

EV Spread Breakdown:
Bonnet has enough Speed for Eggy-A along with some bulk to capitalize on its offensive breaking.
Oricorio-Sensu Speed creeps Mesprit and Passimian so +1 can outpace Scarf, otherwise just really bulky to help set up.
Snorlax is 252+ Attack to immediately output damage and is Rest with Thick Fat to set up on Charizard/Typhlosion.

 

[diegoyuhhi]

submitting 2 teams as well!

sand (original build by fish anemometer, edited by yours truly)

pretty basic sand team, you've got your setter + 3 abusers, cacturne helps with waters and supports the breakers with spikes, while zard deals defensively with stuff like orth and hecid, while appreciating the sand abusers weakening down its checks like regirock.

virizion ho

cookie cutter ho, lead hlugg + 5 boost sweepers on both sides of the spectrum including 2 prio users. virizion is pretty underrated in the current meta, here it's running enough spatk to ohko defensive qwil after rocks with leafstorm.

 

[yo cho]

glast + zard boots spam hazard stack

Kind of an old team but it still holds together. Roar glastrier and zard can get a lot of chip after hazards have been put down and SD decidueye cleans well. Jolteon is there for an electric immunity and serves as some form of speed control which is admittedly a little bit shaky on this team.

toxic dudun + dipplin stall

I think toxic dudunsparce is an underutilized set which is really annoying for a lot of teams to deal with. Paired it with dipplin here for a knock absorber and good fighting switch in. Cramorant is mostly there to just defog and check fire types and orthworm rounds off the defensive core nicely. Passimian and Jolteon are a good voltturn core and are able to revenge kill most offensive threats in the tier. Beware of Magneton it kinda smokes this

 

[BaitWiz]

Status Spam Offense



One of my 'old reliable' teams i tend to fall back on in general that I built in ZUPL and have used a few different times at this point. Decidueye serves as one of the most disgusting abusers of paralysis in the tier and an amazing breaker, offensive H-Qwilfish is an amazing cleaner, Mismagius is an excellent fast attacker, and the rest are just support. While this particular team doesn't have much in speed control outside of paralysis from Cramorant and Mesprit, Decidueye does also carry a strong Sucker Punch to help in this regard, especially when boosted further by Tera - it also helps that most Pokemon on this team are naturally fast.


Band Hecid Offense



This is a modified version of the team I used against ima in week 3 of ZUPL, with the main change being removing Typhlosion's speed control for hazard control in Sandslash. It's overall a fairly straightforward team; Decidueye and Mesprit are the main progress makers, while the other four serve as support while making progress in their own right. Covert Cloak Mesprit is a particularly devastating win condition, working around a lot of the stray secondary effects thrown out by Pokemon like Dudunsparce.

 

[THE_CHUNGLER]

/ / / / /

This is a team originally made by Axtrix (the best to ever do it) for ZUPL that I’ve made some adjustments to keep it a bit more user friendly.

The concept for the team is that the offensive core of OTR eggy+glast is extremely hard for offensive teams to deal with while encore nasty plot mesprit annoys the shit out of fat teams. Zard is just a great glue mon for offense and can make progress vs almost anything. Jolteon is a good pivot to help get the goons in + a volt immunity. Regirock helps stave off the offensive fires for long enough that the offensive core can win, provides rocks, great anti BS tool of course even if teams are prepped out the ass for idbp (or they should be at least).

knock on eggy allows it to remove lax’s lefties or something like a p2’s eviolite and orthworm is already under a lot of pressure here so flamethrower isn’t necessary. Covert cloak on sprit lets it dodge body slam paras from dudun and is just a great item in general on a non that isn’t begging for boots

This team lacks great speed control but the offensive mons are all fantastic at trading so it’s not as big an issue as it could be. Mesprit can also be scarf hwish/scarf trick if desired but nasty plot encore is broken so you can’t go wrong with it. Originally this team was using SD hisuian qwilfish > Mesprit as a psychic resist+toxic switch in+tspike absorber, but it just never did that much and having another fighting resist in Mesprit is nice

 

[sinnabyss]

i still want to use some of my fav teams for swiss but heres some i enjoy playing
Darkspam spikestack offense

This is a slightly modified version of a team i made for the teambuilding competition. Primarily with Sneasel over Malamar, since mal didnt fit too well on an offensive spikestack. Anyways, the core concept is that Bonnet and Sneasel can team up to overwhelm physical walls like Orthworm, Tera Ghost on Sneas helps with Pass trying to revenge kill. Max speed BB creeps neutral Qwil and Cuno. Regirock and Weezing, complemented with the excellent offensive spikestack core of Mesprit + Qwilfish. Charizard helps deal with Whimsicott and Typhlosion, and can further exploit Orthworm switching in on Sneasel / Bonnet. Whims is nice to handle Hecid and Viriz, plus is good at general anticheese with Encore, and can bring in BB or Sneas on stuff like Cuno and Lax. No scarfer here since BB and Sneasel both have strong priority and encore whims also shuts down sweepers.

Specs Clawitzer VoltTurn

Specs Claw has no switchins, thats a fact. A bit of prediction and watch as their special walls get nuked. Pass + Jolt help bring Claw in and form a nice voltturn core. Both of them are good at dealing with offensive teams that Clawitzer struggles to beat. Jolt in particular loves spdef walls like Dudun and Lanturn being eviscerated. Weezing handles Fighting-types like Pass and Hecid. Lanturn blanket checks a ton of special attackers, with flip turn instead of volt switch to pivot on Jolt and opposing Lanturn. Dudun rounds out the team with rocks. Para is nice for Claw and Toxic deals with most sweepers and is nice to break down defensive teams.

 

[Sputnik]

Wanted to throw my hat in here with a couple of teams that are easy to pilot and imo do quite well right now.

Brute Bonnet+Specs Magneton Bulky Offense


This is the team I submitted to teambuilding comp last cycle, I considered changing a couple of moves and Tera types around but it works really well as it is so I decided to leave it. Charizard and Magneton is a very challenging to deal with specially offensive core, really only annoyed by Lanturn which doesn't wanna get burned by Zard and can lose out in the chip war, they can overwhelm basically everything else. Cramorant helps to checks Fire types and is a nice specially defensive wall that is very annoying with Gulp Missile. Palossand helps check Fighting-types and sets up rocks. Passimian is a great scarfer and helps to wear down the opponent. All of this supports Brute Bonnet to sweep, definitely a tera hog but a really good one that is very dangerous late game. Cramorant and Magneton Tera-types cover very specific set up sweepers like Tera Ground Frosmoth and Oricorio.

Life Orb Shaymin+Perrserker Bulky Offense


Little less sure on this one being a sample because its a little less conventional but it's really fun and not difficult to pilot. Shaymin and Perrserker are underrated offensive threats, Shaymin with Life Orb is insanely powerful and nothing really wants to take Seed Flare. Perrserker is absolutely wild especially with Tera Steel you just blow past frailer resists and can pivot out of telegraphed switch ins. I really like the Passimian+Cramorant duo on Bulky Offense they just help out a lot with the playstyle with defogging+good typing+Gulp Missile being rly good and Scarf Pass is just really splashable. Weezing helps to take care of fighting types and spread status to wear down opponents for a Shaymin or Passimian clean late game. Rhydon compresses Rock+Ground typing and sets Stealth Rock.

 

[estra]

We've selected our first wave of samples! Thanks to everyone who submitted! We might open them again after ZU Swiss or a similar period.

 

[estra]

With Dudunsparce banned, the meta has changed considerably given it was a Pokemon hitting > 50% usage in tours lately. Thus, we're looking for new Sample Team submissions. If you're submitting, follow the format below:

Team paste: https://pokepast.es/
Short description explaining EVs (3-5 lines): (Leave this in blank if all the EVs are standard)

Note that staff might approach you if we liked your submission but would like to do some edits together with you, and you'll have the right to agree or not with that.

 

[Inferno Monferno]

Floatzel + Charizard form a good offensive core being able to beat each others checks. Adding spikes support and pivots to bring them in safely makes them very hard to play around. The defensive core of mesprit, lanturn and decidueye-h covers enough of the tier, while also providing some sort of utility in rocks, defog, or speed control. Decidueye-h's speed allows it to outspeed max speed Avalugg-Hisui and Mesprits speed allows it to outspeed adamant max speed decidueye-hisui.


This team was inspired by the first team in this post. Dipplin Articuno and Regirock covers a majority of the tier defensively, and Articuno and Dipplin have the ability to phase opponents out. I wanted to abuse this with spikes, so Sandslash was added. It has enough speed to outspeed non-speed invested Lanturn. Passimian and Jolteon form a very annoying voltturn core which takes advantage of the entry hazards to chip down the opponent's team.


Abomasnow can set up veil, and Snow + Veil + Ice Scales makes Frosmoth insanely bulky, easily setting up subs and quiver dances. Whiscash provides hazards, and Qwilfish is an offensive threat which can take advantage of people leading with grasses to OHKO Whiscash before setting up hazards. Passimian and Mismagius are here to ensure hazards stay on the field or they are punished for removing them.


Very similar to the team above, but uses Alolan Exeggutor and Glastrier over Abomasnow and Frosmoth. Instead of Snow and Veil, here we abuse Trick Room. Eject pack allows us to pivot into Glastrier after setting up Trick room, also at the very least weakening a mon so that its in KO range for Glastrier to get the Chilling Neigh boost.

 

[FlamPoke]

Team paste:
Short description explaining EVs (3-5 lines): Braviary is a nice bulky set up sweeper, with enough Speed investment to creep Brute Bonnet. Cramorant and Mesprit provide a solid defensive backbone and also both Speed creep Brute Bonnet. Choice Specs Jolteon and Choice Band Hisuian Sneasel both provide immediate breaking power, with Hisuian Sneasel also offering Switcheroo for disruption. Regirock is another excellent defensive tool that can win games with IronPress, and is slightly faster than uninvested mirrors.

Team paste:
Short description explaining EVs (3-5 lines): Adamant Choice Scarf Floatzel is excellent Speed control with maximized offensive breaking power. Hisuian Qwilfish and Virizion offer two strong Swords Dance sweepers, especially in conjunction with Vikavolt webs. Mesprit has Healing Wish to offer a second breath to anything that may need it, while forming a nice core with Regirock. Vikavolt itself is a really strong breaker and webs can be a secondary support option depending on the matchup, with Tera Dragon helping as needed with Fire-types if Floatzel or Regirock get worn down.

 

[estra]

Submissions will close this Sunday at 8PM GMT -3.

 

[sinnabyss]

I havent been building ZU in a while but heres some old reliable teams ive liked using


Sun HO, sun is super strong into the offense stuff common nowadays. Lugg sets rocks, denies early rocks from the opponent, and does some good damage too. Volbeat is IMO the best sun setter, thanks to its recovery and slow U-turn. Growth Weather Ball Shiftry to lures Hecid and Orth and blows em up, giving Bonnet an easier time cleaning. I originally opted for lum bonnet but realized that tera fire helps better against zards, so black glasses are used instead for stuff like Qwil. Ofc, Specs Scovillain is here to nuke things like Zard and Hqwil. Victree can pick up after scov, being scary af lategame. Stuff like Tera Dragon Cuno and Lax are annoying for the team but nothing a little brute forcing doesnt fix.


Got inspired by Diego's Viriz HO and wanted to build something bulkier with a similar mixed set. Mixed Viriz lures stuff like Qwil and blow em up with Leaf Storm, paving the way for Scarf Floatzel. Magneton answers annoying stuff like Whims and Weez, evd to creep Bonnet creepers. Zard handles Hecid and likes stuff like Lanturn being destroyed by Viriz. Floatzel gives speed control and makes a nice Voltturn core with Mag. Lanturn helps handle opposing Zard and Jolteon, flip for trace p2. Mesprit glues the team with rocks, knock and pivoting.

I do have some other teams id love to share but with PU taking half the tier (and the mons in the teams) it doesn't seem like a good idea. ;(

 

[sleid]

I know it's weird for me to drop a team as a member of the sample team team, but I wanted to submit an HO with the best suicide lead + some cool offensive mons and sets.

Lead Lycanroc HO. Lycanroc is great into the other HO lead (froslass) and can reliabley stop opposing hazard setters while getting up Stealth Rock of its own. I chose three solid special setup mons that can beat common special walls like Porygon-2. SD Charizard is very strong since it can bypass some of its checks with after an SD, with tera, like Lanturn and Regirock. Flame Charge helps outrun Scarfers if it can get a boost up. Decid is a great breaker with natural defensive capabilities and broken Triple Arrows. Mismagius was mostly chosen to stop spinners. This team is super solid and fun, been laddering with it a bunch.

 

[BaitWiz]

Might as well drop this one off as well.

A fairly solid balance team structured around band Perrserker. Perrserker is an amazing wallbreaker that is nearly impossible to wall and generates a ton of momentum for its team. It finds pretty decent switchin opportunities between Lanturn and Passimian's pivoting moves, and its Steel typing also helps in this regard at times, while the combination of Iron Head, Close Combat, and Knock Off is basically impossible to switch into with any degree of reliability. The rest of the mons are fairly straightforward; Brute Bonnet acts as a secondary physical breaker that pairs smoothly with Perrserker, Charizard helps break on the special side, Regirock and Lanturn provide the defensive backbone of the team, and Passimian helps with Speed control as well as typically taking on cleaning duties. On the topic of Charizard's moveset; with Cramorant soon leaving the tier, I opted for Earthquake as an additional coverage move to hit Lanturn (Thunder Punch was really nice for Cramorant), but its final two moves after its STABs really can be any combination of Will-O-Wisp, Substitute, Earthquake, and Roar based on preference.

 

[Heatranator]

Been getting into Gen 9 ZU a lot recently, so I thought I'd share a team that has been doing well on ladder.

This team is centered around allowing charizard and passimian to unleash there fierce attacks while defensively answering most of the metagame. Mesprit is our rocker and a good defensive piece on here. The moveset is standard while the evs were given to me by FlamPoke (thank you goat), with 56 speed outspeeding brute bonnet. Charizard is a standard set and can help defensively with will-o-wisp early on, then wall break/clean mid to late game. Lanturn is our main special attack answer, with it being able to take on the many special attackers of the tier such as charizard, jolteon and magneton. Passimian is the speed control of the team and late game cleaner, while also being able to get in teammates to make progress. Most of it is standard, but gunk shot is over earthquake because 1. most of the team can wall/threaten poison types and 2. it allows passimian to threaten an ohko on whimiscott and the many tera fairy mons in the tier such as NP mesprit, snorlax at +1 and dipplin. Weezing is the main physical wall of the team, and can accrue a lot of chip damage on foes. Standard set. Finally, toedscruel is able to act as a soft check to special attackers, while also being very offensively threatening. Most of its moveset is standard, but toxic is last over knock off not only because we already have two knock users, but it is very threatening. It can stop setup sweepers that might be getting out of hand, allowing breathing room via careful switching, but also is offensively great. The pokemon that don't care for toedscruel such as Hecidueye, Dipplin and Whimsicott don't like getting poisoned. And the main toxic immunes (besides weezing) don't like taking earth power. This guarentees it makes progress against opponents.

Only have three replays, but I assure you the team is good :)
Replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9zu-2262638147-32jyddij1rnq7ts0tcfkb1tj4wo2pqhpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9zu-2262759650
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9zu-2263336719-1fxf031mif574ughwdvbf1i3qe5pppwpw

 

[estra]

Once again submissions have closed and we've selected our second wave of samples! Huge thanks again for everyone who submitted!!