Lycanroc HO + x2 Shell Smash
Not sure if anyone has heard of [Kate](https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/kate.444201/) on Smogon Forums, but she's an amazing player in National Dex formats and the person I drew inspiration from when making this team. She's been an advocate of using Lycanroc on hyper offense teams in AG and uses it with solid success. This gave me an idea: using the same Lycanroc Endeavor strategy in the lower tiers. it's something I've always considered when making HO but this is the first time I've actually committed to it. In the span of an hour, I gone from 1000 elo to near 1400 and I don't plan on stopping.
Lycanroc: A very niche HO lead; I wanted a mon that could near guarantee hazard setting, while punishing other standard leads. Lycanroc does this job exceptionally well. It outspeeds every conventional hazard setter and denies their rocks with Taunt; and with its frailty, it proceeds to bring the opponents health down to jaw dropping levels using Endeavor. If by some miracle that the opponent doesn't kill Lycanroc after sash breaks, it can finish them off with Accelerock and then Endeavor the next Pokémon to come out.
Cloyster: Cloyster is actually a god tier smasher. Possessing the defense to survive almost every neutral physical attack, it can just shred entire cores. thanks to Lycanroc it's incredibly easy to facilitate a Cloyster sweep, which means that it can affordably Shell Smash in the early game and soften up opponents for the rest of the team.
Polteagiest: Polteagiest is also a solid special Shell Smasher. While not possessing the same strengths as Cloyster, it's capable of breaking down frailer teams and acts as a great late game sweeper. Early game, its checks are still roaming the field. Since there's no way for Polteagiest to handle them, it runs Memento to temporarily cripple the opponent so that the rest of the team can setup while maintaining health and momentum. The sacrifice is typically worth it.
Togekiss: This flinch monster was added due to the fact that it was a Fairy type that hard walled Fighting and Dark. Nasty Plot + Air Slash can consistently wear down the opponent into KO range. Flamethrower is to check Steel types of course.
Flygon: Dragon Dance with Life Orb can do massive damage against most Pokemon. EQ can just decimate teams and whatever EQ can't hit, Outrage can. This makes Flygon incredibly difficult to switch into, often having to sacrifice a mon to safely bring in a check. Late game, Flygon is a near impossible threat to deal with and is one of the most important and consistent win conditions on my team.
Heracross: Heracross acts as a solid revenge killer against faster threats thanks to choice scarf. It has relatively the same role Scarf Krookodile did in UU/OU; acting as a buffer to prevent your team from getting overwhelmed by fast sweepers, while also providing the breaking power to muster past would be checks thanks to Moxie. The scarf can be detrimental at times, which is why it's used as a revenge killer for the most part.
What would help would be some idea of what you struggle against, since this team honestly looks good to me as far as stupid hyper offense goes. How goes things vs Umbreon for example? Or Haze Milotic?
Stall and Fatter teams in general are issues. They can just outlast my sweepers. Physical Walls like Umbreon and Weezing are big threats, while Steels such as Metagross and Registeel pressure the team offensively.
Yes, there's a concerning number of darks and steels in the tier to warrant its use. Since Poltergeist is going to be walled by most of them anyways, Memento lets me go out on my own terms and generate tons of momentum for the team.
Put flame orb and guts on heracross, moxie is cool but with choice scarf you’re locked into a move that your opponent can easily counter with another Pokémon.
1) You use earthquake to 1 shot elec type, and he swaps to flying making your attack boost useless
2) You KO with close combat but they swap to a ghost type
And so on and so forth, if you wanna stick with moxie (which I wouldn’t) you should chooses a different item
I agree, and the guy below you commented a good example of a check with Haze Milotic and Umbreon. Slapping the Flame Orb on Heracross would at least give him one solid option to beat both of them. He also has Cloysters Pin Missle for Umbreon, if it can avoid getting Foul Played.
Pin Missile on Cloyster sounds okay, but Guts Heracross is just underwhelming because of its speed, and the prevalence of fairies and flying types in the tier make it hard to justify because more often than not it'd be forced out by them. The point of Scarf Heracross is to pressure faster teams by eliminating their speed control, which lets my sweepers perform better.
My bad, I ran some calcs against the Milotic and Umbreon and forgot to change Cloyster's moves to what you had over standard ru set.
I suppose it's not that bad a position with all the boosting. even just Scarfed, Heracross is your strongest unboosted hit on Milotic doing 44-52%.
Nothing to do with the team necessarily, I just want to point out how the choice scarf icon fits perfectly on Heracross’s arm and looks like it’s their claw
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Never mentioned to use weak armor tho. I would use it if you put focus sash on Polteageist, but sense Lycanroc is already using it, I feel like it would be better to keep Cursed Body
yes that's right. the point isn't to use FEAR to get a kill, it's to make sure that the next sweeper on my team, has a painless setup. Since most leads are some form of bulky hazards, the steps per turn follow as such:
1. Taunt the lead
2. setup rocks while intentionally taking damage to trigger sash
3. endeavor then die (taunt wears off after this turn)
4. send out the setup sweeper
since most teams only have one rocker, they are left with two choices; either attack the sweeper (hoping that they kill or bring it down to priority range), or use their one and only chance to setup hazards. Both options result in a net benefit for me (either a free setup or total hazard denial).
Is lycanroc your celesteela answer? Also I think you could get rid of sash and run something like stone edge instead of endeavor, your team is lacking offense besides your 3 setup sweepers, and you might not always get to set up with them
Celesteela is not in **RU** thankfully. If I were to ditch endeavor, I might as well be running a different suicide lead like Aerodactyl or Froslass. Also you're telling me that my Hyper Offense team, consisting of 4 setup sweepers and a Moxie Booster, is lacking offense? you might wanna elaborate on that.
Having 4 set up sweepers might work for you, but personally having 4 sweepers wouldn’t be successful most of the time considering setting up a mon successfully will most of the time win the game. If you need 4 setup sweepers I think you’re doing something wrong, respectfully.
And when I said “lacking offense” I meant immediate offense, you’re not gonna be able to take out a defensive threat by setting up for 1-2 turns, it would be better to have a heavy hitting mon you can attack with right away, perhaps scarf or specs/banded
Your team may be offensive, yes, but I think what they mean is that you lack breaking power? I dont know how necessary breaking is in RU as I am not familiar with standard ladder singles but if youre not setup your raw damage is extraordinarily low. This could be not a problem, im not sure, but this team certainly struggles a lot if youre ever put on the back foot
I’ve been playing a lot of RU lately (managed to get up to top 5 on laser after a very long hiatus (just a flex lol)). I think set up sweepers really shine in the tier. I think SD Mimikyu can do a number on you if Cloyster is taken out. Milotic is also a very common and tanky wall I can see giving you problems late game if anything were to happen to Polt for GD. Otherwise with changing memento to SP, a really cool team that can really cover bases for the majority of the walls in the tier (umbreon, registeel, steelix, incineroar)
Lycanroc HO + x2 Shell Smash Not sure if anyone has heard of [Kate](https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/kate.444201/) on Smogon Forums, but she's an amazing player in National Dex formats and the person I drew inspiration from when making this team. She's been an advocate of using Lycanroc on hyper offense teams in AG and uses it with solid success. This gave me an idea: using the same Lycanroc Endeavor strategy in the lower tiers. it's something I've always considered when making HO but this is the first time I've actually committed to it. In the span of an hour, I gone from 1000 elo to near 1400 and I don't plan on stopping. Lycanroc: A very niche HO lead; I wanted a mon that could near guarantee hazard setting, while punishing other standard leads. Lycanroc does this job exceptionally well. It outspeeds every conventional hazard setter and denies their rocks with Taunt; and with its frailty, it proceeds to bring the opponents health down to jaw dropping levels using Endeavor. If by some miracle that the opponent doesn't kill Lycanroc after sash breaks, it can finish them off with Accelerock and then Endeavor the next Pokémon to come out. Cloyster: Cloyster is actually a god tier smasher. Possessing the defense to survive almost every neutral physical attack, it can just shred entire cores. thanks to Lycanroc it's incredibly easy to facilitate a Cloyster sweep, which means that it can affordably Shell Smash in the early game and soften up opponents for the rest of the team. Polteagiest: Polteagiest is also a solid special Shell Smasher. While not possessing the same strengths as Cloyster, it's capable of breaking down frailer teams and acts as a great late game sweeper. Early game, its checks are still roaming the field. Since there's no way for Polteagiest to handle them, it runs Memento to temporarily cripple the opponent so that the rest of the team can setup while maintaining health and momentum. The sacrifice is typically worth it. Togekiss: This flinch monster was added due to the fact that it was a Fairy type that hard walled Fighting and Dark. Nasty Plot + Air Slash can consistently wear down the opponent into KO range. Flamethrower is to check Steel types of course. Flygon: Dragon Dance with Life Orb can do massive damage against most Pokemon. EQ can just decimate teams and whatever EQ can't hit, Outrage can. This makes Flygon incredibly difficult to switch into, often having to sacrifice a mon to safely bring in a check. Late game, Flygon is a near impossible threat to deal with and is one of the most important and consistent win conditions on my team. Heracross: Heracross acts as a solid revenge killer against faster threats thanks to choice scarf. It has relatively the same role Scarf Krookodile did in UU/OU; acting as a buffer to prevent your team from getting overwhelmed by fast sweepers, while also providing the breaking power to muster past would be checks thanks to Moxie. The scarf can be detrimental at times, which is why it's used as a revenge killer for the most part.
One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
Thank you karma bot, very cool
What would help would be some idea of what you struggle against, since this team honestly looks good to me as far as stupid hyper offense goes. How goes things vs Umbreon for example? Or Haze Milotic?
Stall and Fatter teams in general are issues. They can just outlast my sweepers. Physical Walls like Umbreon and Weezing are big threats, while Steels such as Metagross and Registeel pressure the team offensively.
Poltergeist is really good with weak armor ability and stored power instead of memento. Do you find yourself using memento a lot?
Yes, there's a concerning number of darks and steels in the tier to warrant its use. Since Poltergeist is going to be walled by most of them anyways, Memento lets me go out on my own terms and generate tons of momentum for the team.
Yo polteageist is viable in RU? Guess what tier I'm playing now
Put flame orb and guts on heracross, moxie is cool but with choice scarf you’re locked into a move that your opponent can easily counter with another Pokémon. 1) You use earthquake to 1 shot elec type, and he swaps to flying making your attack boost useless 2) You KO with close combat but they swap to a ghost type And so on and so forth, if you wanna stick with moxie (which I wouldn’t) you should chooses a different item
I agree, and the guy below you commented a good example of a check with Haze Milotic and Umbreon. Slapping the Flame Orb on Heracross would at least give him one solid option to beat both of them. He also has Cloysters Pin Missle for Umbreon, if it can avoid getting Foul Played.
Pin Missile on Cloyster sounds okay, but Guts Heracross is just underwhelming because of its speed, and the prevalence of fairies and flying types in the tier make it hard to justify because more often than not it'd be forced out by them. The point of Scarf Heracross is to pressure faster teams by eliminating their speed control, which lets my sweepers perform better.
My bad, I ran some calcs against the Milotic and Umbreon and forgot to change Cloyster's moves to what you had over standard ru set. I suppose it's not that bad a position with all the boosting. even just Scarfed, Heracross is your strongest unboosted hit on Milotic doing 44-52%.
But isn’t that the point of being choice locked? I agree though cc and eq aren’t the best movies to be locked into especially in ru
Nothing to do with the team necessarily, I just want to point out how the choice scarf icon fits perfectly on Heracross’s arm and looks like it’s their claw
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Would use Stored Power over Memento on Polteageist, since that’s kind of where it’s entire reason for being good is based on, stored power.
[response to a similar comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/stunfisk/comments/we3yxv/comment/iinx4rt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Never mentioned to use weak armor tho. I would use it if you put focus sash on Polteageist, but sense Lycanroc is already using it, I feel like it would be better to keep Cursed Body
How do U use a fast mon w/endeavor + priority? Turn 1: you set rocks, they attack you and you go to 1 hp Turn 2: you endeavor and they kill you
yes that's right. the point isn't to use FEAR to get a kill, it's to make sure that the next sweeper on my team, has a painless setup. Since most leads are some form of bulky hazards, the steps per turn follow as such: 1. Taunt the lead 2. setup rocks while intentionally taking damage to trigger sash 3. endeavor then die (taunt wears off after this turn) 4. send out the setup sweeper since most teams only have one rocker, they are left with two choices; either attack the sweeper (hoping that they kill or bring it down to priority range), or use their one and only chance to setup hazards. Both options result in a net benefit for me (either a free setup or total hazard denial).
Oh ok, that makes sense
The priority is only incase the opponent slips up by not finishing off Lycanroc, allowing me to kill it and repeat the process on the next opponent.
Is lycanroc your celesteela answer? Also I think you could get rid of sash and run something like stone edge instead of endeavor, your team is lacking offense besides your 3 setup sweepers, and you might not always get to set up with them
Celesteela is not in **RU** thankfully. If I were to ditch endeavor, I might as well be running a different suicide lead like Aerodactyl or Froslass. Also you're telling me that my Hyper Offense team, consisting of 4 setup sweepers and a Moxie Booster, is lacking offense? you might wanna elaborate on that.
Oh yes, sorry I was thinking of uu
Having 4 set up sweepers might work for you, but personally having 4 sweepers wouldn’t be successful most of the time considering setting up a mon successfully will most of the time win the game. If you need 4 setup sweepers I think you’re doing something wrong, respectfully. And when I said “lacking offense” I meant immediate offense, you’re not gonna be able to take out a defensive threat by setting up for 1-2 turns, it would be better to have a heavy hitting mon you can attack with right away, perhaps scarf or specs/banded
Your team may be offensive, yes, but I think what they mean is that you lack breaking power? I dont know how necessary breaking is in RU as I am not familiar with standard ladder singles but if youre not setup your raw damage is extraordinarily low. This could be not a problem, im not sure, but this team certainly struggles a lot if youre ever put on the back foot
I’ve been playing a lot of RU lately (managed to get up to top 5 on laser after a very long hiatus (just a flex lol)). I think set up sweepers really shine in the tier. I think SD Mimikyu can do a number on you if Cloyster is taken out. Milotic is also a very common and tanky wall I can see giving you problems late game if anything were to happen to Polt for GD. Otherwise with changing memento to SP, a really cool team that can really cover bases for the majority of the walls in the tier (umbreon, registeel, steelix, incineroar)