Week 10: FezandipitiThis week's spotlight is on the toxic chainer; Pecharunt's perfect little soldier. Unlike its ugly siblings, Fezandipiti doesn't provide any raw offensive power. You aren't hitting things with 128 attack close combats or outspeeding mienshao, but what it does bring is a whole lot of utility. A nice defensive typing, passive status spreading and some nice utility moves like taunt, u-turn, thief and every setup move you could want. Thee days it feels like a utility pivot is the best set for fez, but maybe you can be the one to bring back calm mind, or push new boundaries with swords dance.
Teambuilding criteria:
Your team submission must be legal in SV RU and have a fezandipiti on it.
Submission deadline: Teams should be submitted by 11:59 PM (GMT-4) on Friday, May 17th, voting will then go until 11:59 PM (GMT-4) on Sunday May 19th.
Week 11: Swampert
I wanted to mostly stick with the usual set for swampert, but something kept nagging me in the back of my mind. Swampert is a great mon, but it feels like it doesn't contribute enough. And that's when it hit me, swampert feels passive on its normal sets. Yes, knock off is good, but stuff like enam-t can abuse swampert as a set up opportunity. This opens the door for scary sweepers to get in that can take swamperts moves and can lead to a game lose. So this is where I innovated. Since stealth rocks can be used by a lot of good mons, I dropped it in favour of ice punch. This lets it deal with dragons and flying types easier. The attack evs are to make sure standard cyclizar is always 2hit ko'd by it. This can also 3hit ko enamorus-t (who I now hate since ladder decided to actually start using it for once) and salamence is 2hit ko'd after an intimidate. The rest of the moves are standard, e-quake for stab, knock to remove items and flip turn for pivoting and doing good chip.
I have finally conceeded, I have used cyclizar on an RU team. The set is mostly standard but there are three changes I went with. Overheat allows cyclizar to hit steel types that usually wall it such as forretress (who I encountered a ton of and this attests to this tech being good) and cobalion for big damage. I decided to swap the nature to timid in order to maximise its damage. Finally, tera fire helps against opposing fairies but can also help boost the power of overheat if needed. Rest of the set you know and love (or hate in my case) because cyclizar is everywhere.
I decided to choose cobalion for the team as it is a fast mon that can set up stealth rocks. Tera ghost allows it to stay in on fighting moves and set up while meaning even at low health it can deal with maushold. Stealth rocks gives the team a form of entry hazards, iron defense allows it to wall opponents easier while boosting up body press, which is a good stab move and makes cobalion a deadly lategame cleaner if resists and ghosts are out of the picture. Finally, t-wave can disrupt a lot of mons sweeps which could potentially be problematic for the team. Overall, cobalion provides a good wall to the team that can also sweep and provide utility.
Haven't used gardevoir a whole lot in RU, but man, this thing slaps. This is basically the standard scarf set, which works wonders for revenge killing and abusing rain. The only innovations here are tera electric and thunderbolt, which allow gardevoir to properly smack rain and make sure it doesn't try any neat tricks. For example, tera electric thunderbolt has good odds to OHKO basc-f from full, with just rocks guarenteeing the ko. This basically is just a good mon that can threaten things for good damage on a switch. Also has a chance to OHKO enam-t which is nice.
This is why I have the "mostly" in the intro, because this is the major deviation. I needed a grass type for the team in order to do better against rain but breloom was too frail, amoonguss was too passive and chesnaught, while I did consider it, was not as good since synthesis would not be healing for much in rain. I thus decided to dip into NU for my grass type and brute bonnet stood out (vileplume was okay, but didn't mesh with the team). This is the standard NU tank set, with AV to really make it tanky on the special side. For reference, an enam-t moonblast or armarouge armour cannon is nowhere close to ko'ing from full. Seed bomb is a good stab optiona and with tera grass, which has useful defensive applications, can be a really deadly option. Sucker punch allows bonnet to pick off opponents from low health. CC deals with steel types like cobalion that might wall it and crunch is a good dark stab move. Overall, brute bonnet does amazingly on the team and I am shocked it isn't on the VR.
The flying type on the team was really hard to decide, but I went with thundurus incarnate for the last slot. Thundy is a great mon in the tier that can do solid damage and in this team it can really put on the hurt. I decided to go with max hp as when I ran the calcs, thundy actually still got the important 2hit ko's it needed while making it much bulkier. For example, a +1 enam-t moonblast only has a small chance (18%) to kill from full. Meanwhile, thundy can 2hit ko enam back with thunderbolt despite it being at +1 special defense. The set is a bit weird, but works well. Thunderbolt is a good stab option, knock off is annoying for any mon to switch into, u-turn allows thundy to pivot out and sludge wave can hit annoying enam-t's and grass types for big damage.