Altaria

Mossy Sandwich

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UUPL Champion
:ss/altaria:

Base Stats: 75/70/90/70/105/80

Abilities: Natural Cure/Cloud Nine

Relevant Moves*: Brave Bird, Cotton Guard, Defog, Earthquake, Fire Spin, Flamethrower, Haze, Hurricane, Ice Beam, Moonblast, Perish Song, Roost, Will-O-Wisp
*Niche options italicized

Pros:
-Excellent movepool with recovery, Defog and Will-O-Wisp as well as more unique options such as Haze and Perish Song.
-Great abilities with Natural Cure making it one of few status absorbers and Cloud Nine letting it match up well against Rain.
-Wide offensive movepool to choose which target you want to hit.
-Important resistances to common types such as Fighting and Water.

Cons:
-Mediocre bulk can force Altaria to Roost a lot, limiting its ability to use its great support movepool.
-Heavy competition from the many other Flying and Dragon types in the tier. Altaria has to distinguish itself with its unique abilities and movepools to avoid being outclassed by pokemon like Talonflame.
-Forced to use Heavy-Duty Boots due to its Rock weakness.

Tera Types:
Altaria can mix and match its Tera type to help cover certain threats similarly to most defensive pokemon. However, it can also make good use of its Tera type to change its weaknesses and land a crippling Will-O-Wisp on targets that think they can hit it super effectively such as Haxorus, Iron Thorns or Lycanroc-Dusk.
-Steel is very good at landing Will-O-Wisps as all of Altaria's weaknesses become resistances. Steel is s very good defensive type overall, but you have to be careful using it if your team relies on Altaria to resist Fighting, Ground and Fire.
-Water allows Cloud Nine Altaria to better handle Rain staples that carry Ice coverage such as Floatzel. It removes some of Altaria's valuable resistances, but this shouldn't be a big deal since Rain teams rarely carry dangerous Fighting and Ground types.
-Electric makes Cloud Nine Altaria a good counter to Kilowattrel in a pinch, though you might want to have other options to handle Rain's Water-type threats if you want to go with this type.
-Dragon and Grass have different defensive profiles, but both fill a similar niche of making Altaria a better answer to the Rotom forms. Grass, while unable to deal with Rotom-Heat, keeps a useful Ground resistance while Dragon keeps Altaria's defensive capabilities mostly similar, without adding weaknesses.

Viable Sets:
Standard (Altaria) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Cloud Nine / Natural Cure
Tera Type: Steel / Water / Electric / Dragon / Grass
EVs: 240 HP / 252 Def / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Defog / Haze
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hurricane
While there isn't really a basic set for Altaria, most of the time, when using it on a balance team, you will want something with a similar structure to this. Roost and Will-O-Wisp are basically mandatory since Altaria's main niche is being a bulky burn spreader. A utility option is also useful to have. Defog is the most common option due to hazard removal being on the rarer side, but you can make something like Haze or a second attacking move work as well depending on the rest of your team. The last option is generally an attacking move to avoid being shut down by Taunt, usually Hurricane due to its good power and lack of immunities, though many options listed above such as Draco Meteor and Flamethrower can be useful. 16 Speed EVs allows Altaria to outspeed Adamant Azumarill and land a burn. Finally, for the ability, Cloud Nine is generally going to be the best option to deal with Rain, but if you find yourself not having much trouble against it and needing status absorption, Natural Cure can also be useful.

Perish Trap (Altaria) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Natural Cure
Tera Type: Steel / Dragon / Grass
EVs: 240 HP / 252 Def / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Will-O-Wisp
- Perish Song
- Fire Spin
The Perish Trap set is most often dedicated to semi or full stall teams as a Status Absorber with Perish Song to attempt to trap certain targets or to force out threats like Calm Mind Hatterene or Espathra. Similarly to the standard defensive set, the Perish Trapper's main role is spreading burns, but it can also stack the burn damage on top of Fire Spin's passive damage to wear down opponents. However, this set should likely not be used outside of Stall as it is very slow to make progress and is most useful in supporting other defensive pokemon.

Other Options:
While most of Altaria's options will likely be outclassed by one of Talonflame, Noivern or Salamence, there are a few fun tricks it can try to pull off.
-A specially defensive set to try to handle pokemon like Armarouge more efficiently, though Altaria needs to be able to land its Will-O-Wisps against physical attackers, so this set may be awkward to make work and doesn't make use of Altaria's main strengths. It's worth noting that investing just a little bit of Special Defense on the physically defensive sets could end up helping against those special attackers, but staying focused on the physical side is recommended.
-A Cotton Guard+Dragon Dance set that attempts to become too bulky to prevent from sweeping, though this is very likely stepping into gimmick territory and easily stopped by Unaware, Haze, Whirlwind, Ice types, strong special attackers and more.

Example Teams:
:altaria::tinkaton::hippowdon::rotom-wash::gengar::gallade:
This team uses specially defensive Tinkaton and Hippowdon to keep various special attackers in check while relying on Will-O-Wisps from Altaria and Rotom to keep physical attackers in check. With the entire defensive core being immune to Sandstorm as well as burns and Stealth Rock being easily setup, this team can inflict a good amount of chip damage without losing much health themselves. This can open the door for Agility Gallade to sweep lategame. Two Trick users and Encore Tinkaton can also help mess with bulkier teams. Overall, this team has a lot of varied tools to make use of and shows off Altaria's burn spreading capabilities very well, but may be difficult to use due to a lack of defensive pivots and the presence of difficult to use or fragile pokemon like Tinkaton and Gallade.

:avalugg::blissey::quagsire::altaria::slowking::bisharp:
I didn't want this team to be the only example since I already used it for the Avalugg thread, but it's also worth posting here as it shows off Altaria's Perish Trap set very well. With Perish Song, Will-O-Wisp and Unaware+Toxic Quagsire, many setup sweepers have a lot of trouble breaking through this team, and part of it is thanks to Altaria. Alongside Blissey, Altaria also helps absorb status from annoying pokemon like Talonflame and Quagsire to prevent the other parts of the defensive core from being crippled. Aside from that, this shouldn't be too difficult of a team to use, just make sure to handle offensive threats properly and setup for kills with chip damage or traps with Altaria.

Conclusion:
In general, Altaria seems worse than other bulky Flying types, especially Talonflame, but also potentially Noivern and Salamence. As such, you have to use its unique tools to let it stand out. If your team benefits well from Will-O-Wisp, that's a good start, but it's even better if Cloud Nine or Natural Cure can be valuable to you or if Altaria's unique support options benefits your team. It may be hard to fit on teams, but Altaria is great when wielded on the right team and by the right trainer and should not be ignored.
 
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why not brave bird for the standard set, it has slightly more power and is much more reliable
While Brave Bird's consistency and extra power is nice, taking recoil damage isn't good, especially when you're a defensive pokemon whose goal is to take hits. The extra power is also somewhat irrelvant coming off its base 70 Attack stat.

The only situation I can think of where you would go for something other than Hurricane is when you want to hit Wind Rider Brambleghast, but you have other options to deal with it which are much more consistent (Ice Beam, Flamethrower).
 
While Brave Bird's consistency and extra power is nice, taking recoil damage isn't good, especially when you're a defensive pokemon whose goal is to take hits. The extra power is also somewhat irrelvant coming off its base 70 Attack stat.

The only situation I can think of where you would go for something other than Hurricane is when you want to hit Wind Rider Brambleghast, but you have other options to deal with it which are much more consistent (Ice Beam, Flamethrower).
there is also toadscruel, which turns into a 2hko
 
there is also toadscruel, which turns into a 2hko
True, but do keep in mind that you're taking up to 25% of recoil damage afterwards. And Toedscruel isn't really a threat to Altaria anyway: Altaria walls both of Toedscruel's STABs and can take Spore since it has Natural Cure. All Toedscruel can do is click Knock Off to get rid of leftovers, and while it does have coverage moves like Dazzling Gleam, it won't be running them most of the time. In my opinion, Altaria is usually better off running Hurricane, though Brave Bird can be used to hit physically frail pokemon (Toedscruel, Chansey/Blissey), but comes at the cost of having recoil.
 
Altaria has just enough unique things going for it to make it worth running on a team. It has outstanding longevity and unlike most other walls doesn't really care much about being statused. It also can be customized to being able to check many different pokemon depending on the moveset. My favorite set is the Perish trap as it can catch many opponents off guard.
 

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