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Welcome to the latest edition of the Team Rater Competition! The tier this time around will be OU. 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're currently involved in or are looking to start rating OU 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 rates in the final two rounds will count towards the Team Rater
badge.
The winner will be awarded voice status in the RMT room on PS if they have shown an interest in getting involved (If you are currently an active voice and win, you may be promoted to driver).
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.
Participants please PM your rate to Team Pokepals and Celticpride. You have until 23:59 EST on Saturday, 1 October to submit your rate.
Mega Metagross was the mon I wanted to build around. Ice Punch enables Metagross to quickly KO Lando-T and Garchomp, both of which tend to switch into Mega Metagross. Hammer Arm enables Metagross to KO Heatran after a little bit of damage, can be used to KO dark types like Bisharp and Crawdaunt, and finish off a weakened Ferrothorn. Pursuit lets Metagross trap Latios and Latias to remove them to help out Breloom, and Pursuit can also be used to help remove deal major damage to Jirachi if it happens to be locked into Iron Head and tries switching out.
Breloom was the initial partner for Mega Metagross as it is able to break many of Metagross checks, namely bulky waters like Slowbro and ground types like Hippowdon. Also, it can help deal major damage to some steel types including Ferrothorn or Heatran. Mach Punch allows Breloom to revenge kill many threats to offense, like Mega Loopunny and Excadrill, 1HKO'ing both of them. SD along with an Adamant nature + Life Orb is run to hit as hard as possible to help break down threats for the rest of the team. It also has the potential to sweep late game.
Thundurus (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 30 HP / 0 Atk / 30 Def / 30 SpA / 30 SpD
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Nasty Plot
Life Orb Nasty Plot Thundurus is able to help break down bulky teams and with HP Flying, it's able to easily defeat or heavily damage grass types like Tangrowth, Amoonguss and Mega Venusaur, all of which annoy Breloom. By defeating those threats, it would open up a hole in the opponent's team to give Breloom an easier chance to sweep or clean up. Thundurus is also able to help out Metagross and Gyarados as it can defeat bulky waters, Ferrothorn with Focus Blast, and grass types as mentioned before. Nasty Plot makes it easier to quickly KO mons and can easily pressure opponents.
Gyarados was added as another win condition that also benefits from Rotom and Amoonguss being weakened or KO'd by Thundy and Breloom. Gyarados can switch in to choice locked mons like Keldeo locked into Secret Sword, Azumarill locked into Waterfall or Aqua Jet, and Tyranitar locked into Superpower or Pursuit and can help break/weaken Amoonguss, Keldeo, Ferrothorn for the other team members. Rest + Chesto berry helps Gyarados recover and continue to setup in case it gets burned, paralyzed or poisoned, most notably by Scald and Lava plume from Keldeo and Heatran (Toxic as well for Heatran) respectively.
Garchomp is the Stealth Rock user for the team and can also help break opposing teams early game. Yache Berry helps lure Mega Manectric and Thundurus, who would use HP Ice to KO, but instead fail to KO and take massive damage instead. Swords Dance enables Garchomp to 2HKO a ton of threats including Mega Scizor with EQ, Lando-T and Rotom-Wash (who gets 1HKO'd if it takes Stealth Rock damage) by Outrage. Max speed allows Garchomp to outspeed base 100 speed mons like Mega Medicham, Charizard-X and Y, and Manaphy.
Gengar was added to help revenge kill faster threats like Mega Manectric, and threats that setup like Manaphy and Zard-X. It also helps with defeating opposing Mega Metagross, as the scarf enables Gengar to outspeed and avoid a risky speed tie, and it is able to reliably handle Breloom, as it is immune to Mach Punch. Focus Blast helps KO dark types like Tyranitar, and can also KO Mega Lopunny. Trick was run to help cripple mons and lock them into a move to open up an opportunity for another team member to switch in and setup easily.
The winning rate for Round 2 was by ez! He made a good rate that showed many of the qualities that are expected of a Team Rater.
ez started his rate by analyzing the team's massive weakness to Mega Scizor and Charizard-Y. He pointed out that with an offensive EV spread on Altaria, every member of the team was 2HKO'd by Charizard-Y. ez also showed that the team had no answer to Gengar, Mega Alakazam, and Mega Gardevoir, being easily taken apart by those two breakers. Finally, he mentioned that Bisharp was exceptionally problematic as it was able to force out and set up on three members of the team.
ez first changed Terrakion to Scarf Tyranitar, noting that its Pursuit support would enable the team to eliminate opposing hazard removers such as Latios and Starmie to ensure that the team's hazards remained on the field. ez further mentioned that Tyranitar would be able to check Charizard Y and switch in on any move that wasn't Focus Blast. Then, ez recommended that Ferrothorn run Chople Berry to tank Focus Blast from Gengar, Mega Alakazam, and Mega Gardevoir, and be able to retaliate with a Gyro Ball.
Then, ez made an innovative change for the team: Will-O-Wisp Mega Charizard-X over Mega Altaria. ez reasoned that Wisp Charizard-X was able to easily handle Mega Scizor and cripple Bisharp with Will-O-Wisp, providing the team with counterplay to both Pokemon. He also pointed out that it could spread burns to bulky Ground-types like Landorus-T and Water-types like Azumarill, crippling them for Scarf Tyranitar.
ez also provided an alternative version of the team that retained Mega Altaria and used Hidden Power Fire Landorus-T to check Scizor, should the builder desire to keep Altaria. However, ez pointed out that the version with Mega Charizard-X was much more solid in regard to its threat coverage.
Therefore, ez's rate was the best for Round 2! Congratulations.
Sorry for the delay, but we're proud to announce that the winner of the OU Team Rater Competition v2 is ez!
ez's rate was well written and was his format for his rate was good as well. (I'll leave screenshots of the rate down below). He started off by bringing up threats to the team in detail as to how they would be threatening (such as being able to switch and get a free KO or being able to abuse a certain mon or 2).
After providing a threat list, ez went on to suggest changes in order to combat those threats. Those changes include Rocky Helmet > Yache Berry on Garchomp in order to handle Mega Lopunny, Bisharp and Mega Scizor, all of which were extremely threatening for the team. After going over this change, ez went on to mention the downside in losing Yache Berry, which as he mentioned, makes offensive electrics a bit tougher to deal with.
He continued with his changes (Scarf Tyranitar over Thundurus, Power Herb Solarbeam Heatran over Gengar, and Bullet Punch over Pursuit) in similar fashion, with using Tyranitar to help out against offensive electrics, and Heatran to absorb Will-O-Wisp burns from Mega Sableye and trap bulky waters like Slowbro for an easy KO. ez also opted for Bullet Punch on Metagross to provide the team some extra priority to help out against faster threats, such as Weavile.
Finally, ez went over threats after his changes, such as Breloom, which as he mentioned, doesn't have the easiest time switching in, but it does have answers/counterplay in the form of Garchomp, Metagross and Gyarados.
ez has demonstrated the ability to rate at the level of a team rater, and as such he has been rewarded with his badge recently. Congrats to ez, keep up the good work and thank you to everyone who participated!
Shoutouts to my co-hosts who were great while hosting this. Couldn't have done this without you guys!
