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Welcome to the latest edition of the Team Rater Competition! The tier this time around will be USM UU. For each round we'll post a team, and participants will have one week to complete a rate of said team. When the round is over, the participants who submitted the best rates will move onto the next round. If you are eliminated and want to receive feedback on your rate, the hosts will be more than happy to provide that upon request. Each round will last one week. Failure to rate the team within the one week time period will result in disqualification unless you're able to give us a valid reason. Please only sign up if you can commit to rating one team every week for the next month. If you're currently involved in or are looking to start rating UU teams, I highly encourage you to participate as this promises to be a great learning experience. Here's to a fun and competitive tournament!
Important notes:
The top rates from each round in addition to the rates in the final two rounds will count towards the Team Rater badge
The winner will be awarded voice status in the Trainers' School room on PS if they have shown an interest in getting involved.
Each round will last one week. Failure to rate the team within the one week time period will result in disqualification unless you're able to give us a valid reason. Please only sign up if you can commit to rating one team every week for the next month.
If you are eliminated and would like some feedback on your rate and how you can improve going forward, feel free to ask us.
At the end of each round, we will announce the best rate from that round and a quick overview of what we liked in the rates submitted.
Congratulations to vivalospride for receiving the top rate for last round! Check it out below
First let's go over some of the broad issues I can see with this team:
- SD Scizor matchup is pretty horrible.
- Maero matchup/bird spam matchup in general can be extremely annoying since Empoleon can easily be overwhelmed due to not having reliable recovery and the maero answer is a non scarf Krookodile.
- No Pursuit to support NP Ape which could be annoying.
- Poor use of role compression leads to actually fixing these issues extremely irritating while the team does cover most of the meta pretty well otherwise.
The variant I'm most confident in:
- So the first thing I did was do Lucario > Infernape. I did this because it frees up something extremely important that I'll talk about in a second. Other than that I feel Lucario is just the better NP user right now due to it's higher SpA stat, although the loss of speed could be a bit annoying... the higher SpA sort of makes up for the loss of GKnot and the loss of GKnot means you can freely run vwave... which sort of makes up for the loss of speed. This mon essentially does the same thing as nape, just works better on the team to free shit up. Set is standard.
- So this is the thing I was talking about. The thing I kept having trouble with on this team is the fact that Rotom-H solves so many problems but then created stupid ass fire spam w/ Nape and it was just awkward. I did Rotom-H > Hydreigon because this thing fits perfectly here on this team as a Scizor check and backup bird check to take pressure off of Empoleon. This addition also gives us the freedom to move scarf to Krookodile, which would give us Pursuit support for Lucario. 20 SpA OHKOs Celebi after rocks.
Smaller changes:
- Like I said before, I moved the scarf from where Hydreigon used to be onto Krookodile to give Pursuit support and speed control for the team.
- Moved rocks onto Empoleon due to giving Krook scarf... there'd be no rocks now and now you have Defog on Rotom so it's unnecessary on Empoleon now.
- Changed the malt set a little and changed the malt spread a lot. I have no idea what the given malt spread does so I decided to scrap it and make my own. I went with Body Slam > Frustration because paras can work super heavily in Luke's favor n shit. As for the spread I ended up pretty much recreating Twilight's spread but with one little minor adjustment. HP + Def investment lets you live CB BP from Scizor after rocks, Atk investment lands OHKO on Latias w/ Body Slam after sr... and to 2HKO Tentacruel with EQ, the 4 SpA is to 2HKO non lefties Celebi, the SpD lives Sludge Wave from LO/Ebelt Nihilego after rocks... lives corkscrew crash from Drei... and lives +2 AOP from Nape after coming in on rocks in normal form, the Spe hits 179 and creeps Jelli mainly.
- Went with max Def on Amoonguss to better check shit like Terrakion and Coba, the SpD for the Prima calc and all that isn't as necessary due to having Empo.
Altaria-Mega @ Altarianite
Ability: Natural Cure
Happiness: 0
EVs: 252 HP / 68 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpA / 128 SpD / 12 Spe
Relaxed Nature
- Body Slam
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast
- Roost
I wanted to build around Cofagrigus, seeing as its an underrated Pokemon in the current metagame that is never prepped for; it has the ability to sweep late game with its OTR NP set given the proper team support and can almost always get a chance to try due to its natural bulk.
Cofagrigus + Sharpedo seemed to synergy super well offensively, as Sharpedo appreciates Spikes to wear down its checks similar to Cofagrigus, and Klefki compresses a Steel-type, Speed control, and gives me the Spikes that I wanted to make sweeping easier.
I added Mamoswine for its ability to set up Stealth Rock, provide priority, and significantly improve the fat matchup, helping me wear down opposing balance teams for Sharpedo and/or Cofagrigus to break through.
Cobalion makes for a nice offensive check against opposing Scizor and Bisharp and can also act as another breaker or even win condition given the right scenarios.
Lastly, Latias seemed like a good addition due to its ability to pressure some common entry hazard removers like Tentacruel and Rotom-H while dealing out a respectable amount of damage behind LO + 3 attacks.
Before finally announcing the winner, I wanted to give a few thank you’s.
First and foremost, huge thanks to my friends Snowy and Sun for hosting this competition alongside me - it was a ton of fun getting to chat about submissions every week and sad that it has to come to an end.
Second, congratulations to everyone that participated in this competition, especially the finalists (Amane MisavivalosprideDarksafadao) for making it this far. A lot of rounds were very competitive and there were several really solid submissions throughout, making this very enjoyable - and challenging - to host.
Lastly, thanks to anyone else that might’ve helped throughout the comp by providing teams, feedback on rates, etc... TDK, Adaam, Shiba, Accelgor, and anyone else I might’ve forgotten, you know who you are
With all of that being said, please congratulate Amane Misa for winning the second version of the UU Rating Competition! Misa starts out the rate by replacing Mamoswine with Kommo-o to help the team keep up hazards against Rotom-H and other hazard removers through Taunt. Misa then replaces Cobalion with Bisharp to help even more against Defog users; this helps keep the momentum of the team by discouraging Defog and also makes up for the loss of Mamoswine’s priority. Misa then concluded the rate by making Klefki physically defensive with Foul Play to help vs Scizor and Earthquake + Jolly nature on Mega Sharpedo to help vs some offensive Pokemon like Bisharp, Hydreigon, and Krookodile. Check out the full rate and details below!
Oh well, after a good amount of laddering and testing against competent players, this is the best rate I could've compiled, I hope that's enough lol.
While taking current metagame trends into consideration, I came to the realization that this team will struggle with keeping hazards against Rotom-H. Rotom-H can switch-in quite freely on the two hazard setters and click Defog. While the team does have Latias to scare Rotom-H, Latias is worn down quickly in most matchups and it is easily Pursuit trapped. I changed Kommo-o > Mamoswine because of that. Kommo-o is able to beat common hazard setters like Empoleon and Rotom-H by virtue of its typing, and it also has Taunt for other Defog users it can't necessarily KO. It also helps with the matchup against Ground-types like Swampert, Krookodile, and Hippowdon, as Mamoswine had troubles beating the former two, while both Swampert and Hippowdon are shut down by Kommo-o's Taunt and it can take any 1 hit from Krookodile and KO back. The loss of Mamoswine's Ground-typing is negligible because the team already pressures Volt Switch users enough, and two Electric-resists also don't give Volt Switch users much room to break.
Yet, Defog users can still outplay and get their Defog off. Throughout testing, I realized that once a Defog user Defogs away hazards the team's momentum sinks right away. Furthermore, Cobalion was probably the weakest spot on the team, as it gave hazard removers like Tentacruel and Mantine a free Rapid Spin or Defog, respectively. All in all, I concluded that Bisharp > Cobalion would fit the offensive nature of the team much better. Bisharp also makes up for the loss of Mamoswine's priority in checking faster threats and revenge-killing.
Naturally, with Cobalion gone, the team is going to be weaker to physical attackers like Scizor and Bisharp. Because of that, I changed Klefki's spread to 252 HP / 248 Def / 8 Spe and its nature to Impish, and Foul Play > Toxic. That allows Klefki to not be a setup fodder for these two, and it also helps with an opposing Mega Sharpedo. I also replaced Earthquake > Psychic Fangs and Jolly > Adamant on Mega Sharpedo, to check Bisharp much better and to clean much more easily against offensive teams that have Krookodile and Hydreigon.
The team looked pretty good at this point. As I said, it did well on the ladder, as well as against competent players. The way to play it is the following: set up hazards as quickly as possible and start breaking and pressuring. Take advantage of Pursuit trappers that may try to trap Cofagrigus or Latias to set up with either Bisharp or with Mega Sharpedo. Finally, try to sweep with either Mega Sharpedo or Cofagrigus, as Bisharp is moreso used early- to mid game.
Cofagrigus @ Ghostium Z
Ability: Mummy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Nasty Plot
- Trick Room
- Shadow Ball
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
