OU Dodrio Offense - A fun and possibly viable team

Hello, I'm Gul Macet and I have the dubious distinction of having by far the worst GXE on the top 100 Gen 3 OU ladder on my alt Fly_Master_5k. A lot of those L's were due to experimentation with the Monotype and BL challenges on the ADV ladder achievements, but I’m also just bad.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about a team that I had a lot of success with and which ultimately I think is viable despite having bad pokemon. I'll admit that I'm not a very good ADV player, but it's my favorite metagame. I've really enjoyed trying the ladder challenges, and I wanted to share a part of the fun I've had over the last few months (and unlike my unpublished write-ups on monotypes, there may even be some useful information.)

I apologize if this team or similar has been discussed before, I’m not very involved in the discourse of ADV, but hopefully you’ll find it at least entertaining.

https://pokepast.es/a06ef9e57c8ba5b9

The team is essentially two cores with Dodrio as the connecting pin. Dodrio/Camerupt/Vaporeon is your main defensive core, and I know how that sounds, but I can explain. Obviously Mag/Meta/Mence is a standard physical offensive core, but Dodrio also plays a huge role in setting this up.

First off, I’ll explain “why Dodrio?” I was inspired by this video (
) on the benefits of CB/dry pass Dodrio. If you’re on the Smogon forums reading this, you already know baton is amazing, even without stat boosts. While Jim Cool recommends an Adamant Dodrio, I’m a fan of leading with Jolly HP-fighting Dodrio. You’ve got a 69% (nice) chance to OHKO even bulky Ttar, you smack a lot of gimmicky mon really hard, and you can BP away from Bulkier leads. HP-fighting does reduce your speed IV, so that kind of sucks.

Wrong!

You will always be slower than Jolly/Timid 100 speed mon, and this is vital information for my speedcrept Mence and Agil Meta. Confirming that an opposing Mence or Flygon is Jolly is very helpful for setting up your Agility, since they can’t be max attack, and often people just run Adamant/Modest mon at 270, though that is more of a gamble since some mon are run in the low-300s.

Dodrio’s worst lead matchups are Zapdos/Gengar and Metagross/Jirachi, and that’s where the other bad mon come in. Camerupt is very happy to absorb thunderbolts, ice punches, whatever, and explode on a bulky water. Vaporeon can handle steel types, wish heal your CB’ers (I did have slow BP on vaporeon, but honestly roar and toxic are more important) and absorb surfs.

Yes, Dodrio, Camerupt and Vaporeon all have critical immunities that cover each other’s weaknesses, and an early-game may involve a bit of switching between these three, until Camerupt can secure a boom or you can BP in Mag on Skarm.

Second, hiding your Mag, Meta, and Mence sets. This is the less interesting part, as I assume any good player knows about set obfuscation, but I figured I’d explain my thought process for these specific sets.

Endure Mag can sometimes completely pop off, while still retaining its role as a Skarm killer. HP grass over Ice because for physical offense, Pert is your second biggest problem behind Skarm. AgilGross is your wincon, and with Camerupt boom and Vaporeon for bulky waters, you can often get him rolling. Having a second explosion just in case you miss is nice too. CB Mence is great, and I admit I got a little cheeky with the hidden power. How does your opponent tell the difference between a Band HP-Bug and a Lum HP-Fly when it hits their bulky water? They can’t, and that means that they probably won’t be expecting the banded Double-Edge when they go for the second switch-in.

Overall, I highly recommend trying this team out. I’ve really enjoyed using it, and I honestly think that despite being made for the BL challenge, someone could hit #1 on ladder with this.

Let me know your thoughts, and I hope you enjoyed reading.
 
Great RMT, really like how you explain the synergy and choices for sets and natures. I have some questions and feedback about the team;

1. Why HP Bug on the mence? With a stab Flying mon and camel I think that's plenty insurance against celebi, unless it's for something I dont know about it doesn't make sense to have a mence that cant touch fighters (which this team is fairly weak to).
2. With Dodrio's 30 IV speed, I think dropping the speed to 220 EVs and pumping the 36 EVs into HP would serve you well- you still scout jolly 100's and outspeed threats like jinx while also gaining a little bit of bulk. Also I'd like to just share this calc in response to bulky ttar

252+ Atk Choice Band Dodrio Hidden Power Fighting vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Tyranitar: 418-492 (103.7 - 122%) -- guaranteed OHKO

3. What's the Spdef on Mag for? Genuinely curious.

Other than that I think you made a really neat team.
 
Hey thanks for the feedback!

1. I think I was really scared of Starmie and Claydol. My typical use of Mence early game was to pull him out defensively for intimidate, and scout a switch with HP Bug. Sometimes you catch Starmie or Claydol on the switch and cripple them. It also is neutral instead of resisted on Metagross and Jirachi (and super effective instead of resisted on Ttar), making it a good middle ground option between EQing and letting in ground immunes, or revealing double edge to a resist.

Also like I mentioned, I caught out a lot of Milotics, Swamperts and Suicunes switching into Mence the second time with a double edge, in part I assume bc HP Bug banded looks like HP Fly, and they don't expect the Band.

I wasn't too worried about fightings bc they suck so hard. Hariyama can definitely be a problem, and some variants of Heracross are big problems, but generally they don't pose too much of an issue. Worst case sack Vaporeon or camerupt, bring in Dodrio and force a 50/50 on drill peck or baton pass.

Running alternative Mences & Metas, or swapping Mence for Ttar or Gyara was something I did semi-often when I ran into the same guy on the ladder several times. I just happened to have the most success with AgilGross and HPBug Band Mence.

2. Yeah looking back at Jolly Dodrio, that seems like a waste. Definitely run adamant.

3. I only needed 250 speed to outrun Dugtrio after Salac, so the rest are dump EVs. I went SpDef over general bulk bc I expect to endure any super effective physical hit anyway. It helps with the HPfire-less Mag mirror a bit (which happened surprisingly often), and lets Mag do better against weaker special hits, particularly against waters if Vapereon is toxic'd and getting worn down, or Gengar and Electrics, if I missed the camerupt boom.

**Oh yeah and on Mence HPBug, everyone expects HPFly when they see HP mence, so that helps deter some switches while inviting in favorable ones (like Claydol). Probably not worth it, but I like the surprise factor.
 

vapicuno

你的价值比自己想象中的所有还要低。我却早已解脱,享受幸福
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Past WCoP Champion
Moderator
I don't mean to be a party pooper, but for future reference posts like these should go into this thread for teams that are reasonably successful. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...eviously-general-metagame-discussion.3648620/
Those that are more exploratory can go here.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/adv-ou-creative-sets-synergistic-cores-and-concepts.3687815/

Generally though these kind of posts are a bit in an odd spot, so I can understand why you did what you did. I will talk to some mods to see how we can make things better.
Cheers
 
Last edited:
I apologize for the post, I'm not super involved in smogon discourse generally, so I don't really know much about the community.

I don't know if there is a thread for suboptimal but interesting teams, but I would like something like that. Since this was a guts team and I assume those threads are for serious tournament players, I didn't want to clog up those threads.

I also have write-ups on (much) worse teams, and I don't think they would be appropriate for serious threads, but I'd like to post them somewhere. I think I have like a 30 page essay on the viability of every mono-type for the gym leader ladder challenge and no idea what to do with it.

I don't think i have that much to contribute to the larger threads since I'm not a top player or anything, but I hope I can get more involved in the community in my own way.
 
I think your heart was in the right place, and if you’d like to post your monotype write up in the larger adv metagame posts, there’s no problem w that at all. When I did the monotype challenge, I learned some new things about how specific mons work together in the context of keeping the same type, so I’d be excited to see your take on the wider metagame.

In terms of your team itself, dodrio has some viability and does some unique stuff something like salamence can’t do like bping to mag on skarm and having a usable flying stab. I really struggled to make it work, bc it just doesn’t have any defensive utility and needs an aggro pace w mag offense, which is already strapped for slots as is. My general mag offense template is mag meta dd flyer (gyara/mence) pseudo special check (celebi/lax/bliss) x x. Mag offense also works best w the element of surprise, which your team certainly has. If I wanted to work w the guts of what you had, something like this would be what I would try: https://pokepast.es/ae05f6ea6494ec37. This might give you more early game counterplay to Zapdos (something more offensive teams always need) and have the counter dd tar play to help remove pert (which doesn’t want to pump your tar bc vap) and meta for your dd mence and dodrio combo to clean. Still need to be careful against Gengar and spikes. I’m always available on here through dm if you’d like to talk.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top