SD Fezandipiti Team
I wated to make a more conventional team, but it fell through so I decided to use a more unique team. This team is a Bulky Offense team that uses fezandipiti as a bulky SD user that can break through walls in combination with its ability.
Of course, the subject of this weeks teambuilding competition, fezandipiti was probably the most difficult mon to make work. I started out with a more offensive calm mind set, then pivoted to a NP set, and then gave up and decided to just follow the OP and use an SD set. This is a set that can work both defensively and offensively, being able to take hits and sweep if needed. The ev spread is to make sure fezan can outspeed mimikyu and break its disguise before it attacks. SD of course makes sure fezan can boost itself in order to hit harder. Play rough is a good stab option, while dual wingbeat has two purposes. The first is to hit fairy resistant targets such as amoonguss while still hitting grass types super effectively and the second is to break focus sashes and mimikyu's disguise. It also means that you get two potential procs of toxic chain. Okay, I basically teched dual wingbeat in order to break disguise, the other things are side benefits. Roost allows fezandipiti to keep itself healthy over the course of a battle. Tera flying allows fezan to ignore ground type moves and boost the power of dual wingbeat.
With Thundurus-T leaving the tier, I wanted to try out a different electric type to see how they worked. I originally had Thundy-I and while it worked well, it felt really frail. I decided to go with magnezone which is a lot bulkier and provides some serious firepower, basically acting as our specs user. Normally, magnezone runs magnet pull in order to trap some steel types, and while this was good, I felt that analytic was a lot better. The only two steel types that are really threatened by magnezone are empoleon and forretress, one is a good mon, but the other is meh and is exploitable. With anayltic, magnezone hits like a truck, even resists such as cyclizar take massive damage from resisted hits. The speed evs are to underspeed most things, but still outspeed the normal enam-t spread, which is nice as earth power hurts. The moves are standard, with mirror coat providing some utility by smacking fire types hard.
I really wanted to use cyclizar, but it just didn't fit into the team structure, so I went with noivern as our flying type and hazard removal. This is the standard NU utility set, with defog to remove hazards, roost to keep itself healthy, u-turn to get teammates in and hurricane as stab so it isn't a free switch in. Tera steel is a good defensive typing on it, being able to take rock and ice moves. It's basically just a bread and butter set, not much more.
I have not used hippowdon much in RU, but I decided to give it a whirl on this team. This is a standard hippo set, with rocky helmet and tera ghost taking on most physical attackers. E-quake does decent damage, stealth rock is the hazard option on this team to make sure opponents don't switch endlessly, slack off provides recovery and whirlwind can phase out setup sweepers. Really, not much innovation but its good and gets the job done.
I needed a fast mon on the team, and although other mons were appealing, gengar I thought was the best of the bunch. Gengar is also probably the most customisable of the over base 100 mons, with many utility options at its disposal. I decided to go with a toxic spikes set, which can be devestating to an unprepared team which overelies on cyclizar to keep hazards off. This also helps break open walls which don't pack HDB, such as chansey, chesnaught and hippo. The rest of the moveset is standard, with shadow ball and sludge wave as stabs and t-bolt to hit empoleon and flying types for big damage.
Finally, I needed a choice scarf user for the team, and I found that my rain matchup was a bit dicey. Choice scarf barraskewda fixes both of these issues, being able to abuse opposing rain and still act as a solid revenge killer. With jolly instead of adamant, barra can always outspeed +1 cyclizar and revenge kill it, opening up the door for gengar to sweep later. Flip turn allows barra to get some damage off and get out of a situation. Liquidation is a good stab move for barra, while close combat can hurt opposing cyclizar and empoleon. Crunch along with tera dark can help deal with the many psychic types in the tier such as iron leaves, slowbro and reuniclus, with it having a chance to OHKO the first and 2hit ko'ing the other two.
Week 10: Fezandipiti
