OU - ADV OU Teambuilding Competition (Cycle 2: Hariyama) (2024)

Welcome! This is a project thread hosting a weekly teambuilding competition, showcasing the many niche options available in ADV OU! Each week, participants will be given a Pokemon to include in a team, with the goal being to highlight each mon's niche, make great teams, and have fun!

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The rules are as follows:

1. Cycles will consist of 7 days for submissions and 3 days for voting, with extensions allowed for tiebreaking votes and/or insufficient activity to comprise a slate of at least two submissions.

2. Each submission must include a valid pokepast.es importable, a name for the team, and a visual representation of the team using any of the available sprite icons. A valid team submission may look something like this.

Houndoom + MagDol Curselax Setup

https://pokepast.es/3ed9a29a41baf53b

Note: Icons (also known as minisprites) can be used in forum posts with the format :name:. For example, :snorlax: results in

3. Teams will be slated on the basis of the host's judgement. Any complete team showing a clear amount of effort will be slated! sh*tposts and plagiarized teams will not be slated. Put some effort into it and have fun!

4. Any changes to team submissions will not require a second post, simply edit your original post before the due date and the most recent submission will be slated!

5. Do not clutter the thread with off-topic posts!

6. The slate will have each submission labelled alphabetically. Voting will use the ranked pairs system, manually processed by the host. No specific format is required, but votes must communicate a preferred ranking of each submission. A valid ballot would look something as follows:

A>C>E>D>B

Note: If you have submitted a team, you are still allowed to vote, but not for your own submission.

Thank you, have fun, and happy building! The first cycle will be announced shortly.

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Hall of Fame

Cycle 1 (Raikou) - "Dug Weak, or am I?" by muks and Sophocles

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I'm not good at team building nor Gen 3, but I'll try

QuadRest Bulky Offense

(I probably burned the kitchen). My first thought was that I needed a Flying-type, so I believed Gyarados would be the best option. It has Intimidate to pair with Raikou's lower Physical bulk. Then there was Raikou itself, who I decided on a Rest set, but not a RestTalk set, which you will see why later. Dugtrio was a necessity, as it could trap Blissey very well. Celebi was using a standard utility set, but Heal Bell instead of Recover so that it can wake up the Pokémon resting. Regirock is there as a massive physical wall, boosted further by Rest and Gyarados Intimidate. Tentacruel was a bit of a niche option, but I decided that the conjunction of Rapid Spin and high SpDef. The reason why I didn't choose Claydol was that Claydol would mean my walls get destroyed by any Water-types, while Tentacruel adds means my walls are weak to Ground, but Gyarados offers an immunity to it. Also, Tentacruel is a better defensive partner for Celebi than Claydol. (Again, I may have burnt the kitchen)

Double Dog Boom Offense (current peak: #34 - 1678)

https://pokepast.es/5cc74dcb1e2ca73b

Wait, isn't that the name of a GSC sample?

Raikou Spikes Offense
https://pokepast.es/d9fafb703b2946b2

In adv one of the most dominant and viable styles is AeroSpikes rockspam, characterized by spikes and ddtar breaking common sturdy rock resist for aero to setup the aero pivot endgame of aero clicking powerful cb moves (or vice versa, with spikes and a good double edge on a forced pert entry dealing so much to pert that it cant live the Edge as it enters on a ttar clicking dd). They tend to be very fast paced, and use the common core of TTar, skarm, swampert, celebi, and aero.

However, these teams despite their potency, these teams struggle vs quite a few specific threats:

Raikou's biggest niche is it completely flips the script on the defensive jirachi. Entering on a wish lets you sub and cm in its face, forcing it out and making them forced to manage a huge special threat under spikes, which even blissey can struggle to do if it has taken chip and spikes are up. Raikou is normally paired with dug to trap and remove special walls, but Spikes + sand chip can severely pressure the normal blissey special walls in a similar fashion, to the point raikou can just break through them itself, or severely limit them to the point the aero who enters ohkos and forces out blissey or snorlax instead of healing (which under spikes, makes them easy to deal with for the rest of the game anyway.)

Raikou here is also built to outspeed and sub on gengar, with even the stronger variants of bulky spreads unable to break through subs, and offensive variants being outsped regardless and struggling too. It also goes without saying that raikou outspeeds and ohkos common variants of charizard and moltress, and this raikou also can sub on timid zapdos too. It is invested to live 1 claydol eq in sand and trade it, and uses hp ice to deal with mence and because the pert is also being broken by ddtar or aero anyway. Raikou also is very good at dealing 70%, something spikesand is excellent at capitalizing and pushing into range for raikou.

Raikou here is a jolteon or zapdos who completely flips the script on defensive jirachi, and helps vs other common aerospike threats, which is the justification to it's inclusion on my team submission.

click sprites to get paste

BLUE LIPS

holy moly. might rmt this later.

Raikou - Sato

Import: https://pokepast.es/282e0db35d93a2b5

Explanation:

Metagross:

Porygon2:

Raikou:

Skarmory:

Dugtrio:

Gengar:

PS: Sorry if it is poorly written, Google Translate is not perfect.

Dug Weak? Or am I? >=] by ThisGuyMuks and Sophocles

https://pokepast.es/120d5c74d41a3678

The idea behind this team was one that Cdijk16 (hope I got that right) posted in their team cores idea in a post a few months back. If you stack up mons that are non-eq dug bait, then you can trap it with your own dug once it’s locked into HP Bug or Aerial Ace. This frees you up from using Porygon2 which is obviously a great Raikou partner.

With Dug out of the way, I thought of the other problems Raikou has, the fat normals Blissey and Snorlax. I chose to stack two fighters as opposed to going HeraBi or LoomBi (I’ve already trademarked those abbreviations so don’t even try it). Breloom helps against Tar, another Raikou enemy. Hera is my status absorber on the team. If I were to drop one for Celebi here, it’d probably be Hera, but they do work pretty well together.

I’m leading with an offensive Milo to check DDMence/Aero which the team needs a lot of help against. I initially had it with the defensive Milo ev’s but I kept finding myself wanting more punching power against neutral targets. The benchmark I used is it 3 hits Bulky Celebi with Ice Beam which I dunno, could probably find a better one tbh but felt like the targets I was hitting pump were getting hit appropriately.

Claydol is Claydol. 5 other grounded mons need the spin support. Classic physically defensive synergy with Milo. Boom when you need it.

The Dug has special dug ev’s for Blissey which this team easily clears with Beat Up with how much total attack it has. Also gives you a chance of speed tieing and clearing opposing jolly dug if all else fails.

The Raikou set is just standard but I’ve been toying with just making it modest so that it 2-hits Tars after a CM.

goofy lil kou

https://pokepast.es/b4f129ee0d0581be

Raikou's niche as a special check is that it owns Skarmory and has a fantastic offensive presence to boot. The "spike control" plan for a Raikou team is natural: load up on threats (including Raikou) that threaten Skarmory to proactively deny spikes, instead of including something reactive like a spinner or Magneton. Having "six hitters" also facilitates gameplay at the extremely quick pace that Raikou prefers. Read below to learn how I built a mixed offense team that exploits Raikou's strengths while covering its weaker matchups into Dugtrio, Blissey, Claydol, and Aerodactyl.

Submissions closed! Here is the slate.

A. Heal Bell!Celebi + Bulky Band Duggy by Go make a sandwitch

Go make a sandwitch said:

Heal Bell!Celebi + Bulky Band Duggy

So when building this team, my thought process was that I should stick to P2 and Duggy, since they're great partners for CM!Raikou anyways. P2 was a standard set, and it does good work with countertrapping and the like, but I went with bulky band Duggy so this team can handle Blissey better. 140 SpDef lets it survive an Ice Beam from Blissey, 96 Speed with a Jolly nature lets it outspeed base 100 mons, and the rest goes into HP for general bulk. As for other teammates, I wanted to focus on how they benefit Raikou in particular. Celebi has Heal Bell, which can remove status on Raikou and its teammates, as well as Leech Seed for recovery and Baton Pass to pivot into another teammate. The EV spread is based on the Utility spread, but I reallocated the 40 SpAtk EVs to its defenses evenly because I didn't find myself using Psychic all that much. Forretress is the resident hazard dealer on the team, and with its standard set can actually have good odds at surviving HP Fire from Magneton, allowing it to KO back with EQ. Last mon I have on the team was DD!Mence, to punish Dugtrio and also have a potential late game cleaner.

Click to expand...

B. QuadRest Bulky Offense by OceanicGamer

OceanicGamer said:

I'm not good at team building nor Gen 3, but I'll try

QuadRest Bulky Offense

(I probably burned the kitchen). My first thought was that I needed a Flying-type, so I believed Gyarados would be the best option. It has Intimidate to pair with Raikou's lower Physical bulk. Then there was Raikou itself, who I decided on a Rest set, but not a RestTalk set, which you will see why later. Dugtrio was a necessity, as it could trap Blissey very well. Celebi was using a standard utility set, but Heal Bell instead of Recover so that it can wake up the Pokémon resting. Regirock is there as a massive physical wall, boosted further by Rest and Gyarados Intimidate. Tentacruel was a bit of a niche option, but I decided that the conjunction of Rapid Spin and high SpDef. The reason why I didn't choose Claydol was that Claydol would mean my walls get destroyed by any Water-types, while Tentacruel adds means my walls are weak to Ground, but Gyarados offers an immunity to it. Also, Tentacruel is a better defensive partner for Celebi than Claydol. (Again, I may have burnt the kitchen)

Click to expand...

C. Raikou Spikes Offense by Funkybeangamer

Funkybeangamer said:

Raikou Spikes Offense
https://pokepast.es/d9fafb703b2946b2

In adv one of the most dominant and viable styles is AeroSpikes rockspam, characterized by spikes and ddtar breaking common sturdy rock resist for aero to setup the aero pivot endgame of aero clicking powerful cb moves (or vice versa, with spikes and a good double edge on a forced pert entry dealing so much to pert that it cant live the Edge as it enters on a ttar clicking dd). They tend to be very fast paced, and use the common core of TTar, skarm, swampert, celebi, and aero.

However, these teams despite their potency, these teams struggle vs quite a few specific threats:

Defensive jirachi - "Fearrachi" as it's known is a wish protect toxic fire punch variant of jirachi with massive bulk on the physical end. This Rock resist with the ability to heal with instant recovery completely ruins aero teams without ddtar, and it can still enter on ddtar and tox while healing up later with wish, unlike swampert or metagross which are limited to their leftovers recovery which gets stifled by spikes. This, for many players, is considered the #1 worst matchup for aero spikes, especially if the tar isn't dd.

Fires/mixed salamence - fast special attackers who break through the celebi normally used to wall zapdos and co, and have wisp or focus punch for the tar, and while zard/mence cant hit aero too well beyond subpunch once or surprise rock slide/hydro, it also forces in aero every time for this core of 5 (unless you pivot around mence). Spike immunity means they are also difficult to take down.

gengar - similar to the fires, but uniquely even faster and able to live a aero slide in lategame and burn. Spikes immune and toxic immune, so a good tox from skarm on a predict doesn't even help.

Claydol - spins, resist rock. Skarm can be used to tox and spam spikes, so this isn't as big of a deal, but the ability to remove spikes layers and force skarm in over and over can be something to struggle with.

Raikou's biggest niche is it completely flips the script on the defensive jirachi. Entering on a wish lets you sub and cm in its face, forcing it out and making them forced to manage a huge special threat under spikes, which even blissey can struggle to do if it has taken chip and spikes are up. Raikou is normally paired with dug to trap and remove special walls, but Spikes + sand chip can severely pressure the normal blissey special walls in a similar fashion, to the point raikou can just break through them itself, or severely limit them to the point the aero who enters ohkos and forces out blissey or snorlax instead of healing (which under spikes, makes them easy to deal with for the rest of the game anyway.)

Raikou here is also built to outspeed and sub on gengar, with even the stronger variants of bulky spreads unable to break through subs, and offensive variants being outsped regardless and struggling too. It also goes without saying that raikou outspeeds and ohkos common variants of charizard and moltress, and this raikou also can sub on timid zapdos too. It is invested to live 1 claydol eq in sand and trade it, and uses hp ice to deal with mence and because the pert is also being broken by ddtar or aero anyway. Raikou also is very good at dealing 70%, something spikesand is excellent at capitalizing and pushing into range for raikou.

Raikou here is a jolteon or zapdos who completely flips the script on defensive jirachi, and helps vs other common aerospike threats, which is the justification to it's inclusion on my team submission.

Click to expand...

D. BLUE LIPS by Zerkas

Zerkas said:

click sprites to get paste

BLUE LIPS

holy moly. might rmt this later.

Click to expand...

E. Raikou - Sato by Sato07

Sato07 said:

Raikou - Sato

Import: https://pokepast.es/282e0db35d93a2b5

Explanation:

Metagross:

The team's lead, it hits both TTar lead and Metagross lead, in addition to hitting many things (not necessarily effectively but it can take too much away from them, anyway, the point of CB Gross is to wear down.)

Porygon2:

Answer to the team's Dugtrio, it can go in against special monster counters (Jolteon, Vaporeon) by being able to copy their ability.

Raikou:

It is the wincon of the team, it suffers against common things (tyranitar, metagross, aerodactyl, dugtrio, etc.), against some mons its 1vs1 depends on its HP (Swampert, Flygon, Celebi, Salamence...)

Skarmory:

It helps me keep some things in range, he can't do anything offensively, he's too passive.

Dugtrio:

Raikou needs to take out Blissey and Dugtrio can do that, plus he can take out some things (DD TTar, Heracross/Breloom, Metagross, Jirachi, Celebi, maybe I'm skipping something.)

Gengar:

The spin block, helps vs Body Slam Rachi which can complicate Raikou's sweep (ToxRachi doesn't break Raikou's sub easily.)

PS: Sorry if it is poorly written, Google Translate is not perfect.

Click to expand...

F. Dug Weak? Or am I? >=] by muks and Sophocles

muks said:

Dug Weak? Or am I? >=] by ThisGuyMuks and Sophocles

https://pokepast.es/120d5c74d41a3678

The idea behind this team was one that Cdijk16 (hope I got that right) posted in their team cores idea in a post a few months back. If you stack up mons that are non-eq dug bait, then you can trap it with your own dug once it’s locked into HP Bug or Aerial Ace. This frees you up from using Porygon2 which is obviously a great Raikou partner.

With Dug out of the way, I thought of the other problems Raikou has, the fat normals Blissey and Snorlax. I chose to stack two fighters as opposed to going HeraBi or LoomBi (I’ve already trademarked those abbreviations so don’t even try it). Breloom helps against Tar, another Raikou enemy. Hera is my status absorber on the team. If I were to drop one for Celebi here, it’d probably be Hera, but they do work pretty well together.

I’m leading with an offensive Milo to check DDMence/Aero which the team needs a lot of help against. I initially had it with the defensive Milo ev’s but I kept finding myself wanting more punching power against neutral targets. The benchmark I used is it 3 hits Bulky Celebi with Ice Beam which I dunno, could probably find a better one tbh but felt like the targets I was hitting pump were getting hit appropriately.

Claydol is Claydol. 5 other grounded mons need the spin support. Classic physically defensive synergy with Milo. Boom when you need it.

The Dug has special dug ev’s for Blissey which this team easily clears with Beat Up with how much total attack it has. Also gives you a chance of speed tieing and clearing opposing jolly dug if all else fails.

The Raikou set is just standard but I’ve been toying with just making it modest so that it 2-hits Tars after a CM.

Click to expand...

G. goofy lil kou by Redless

Redless said:

View attachment 623578
goofy lil kou

https://pokepast.es/b4f129ee0d0581be

Raikou's niche as a special check is that it owns Skarmory and has a fantastic offensive presence to boot. The "spike control" plan for a Raikou team is natural: load up on threats (including Raikou) that threaten Skarmory to proactively deny spikes, instead of including something reactive like a spinner or Magneton. Having "six hitters" also facilitates gameplay at the extremely quick pace that Raikou prefers. Read below to learn how I built a mixed offense team that exploits Raikou's strengths while covering its weaker matchups into Dugtrio, Blissey, Claydol, and Aerodactyl.

I opt to handle Dugtrio via "matchup division" (see Vapicuno's teambuilding guide) rather than bringing a countertrapper. Dugtrio is rarely paired with Swampert. Thus, teams with Dugtrio can be targetted in broad strokes simply by running threats that Swampert's alternatives (Suicune, Starmie, Jirachi, Milotic) struggle with. For this, we have bulky ddtar, a Tyranitar that preys on the Jolly Dugtrio that stymie Raikou. Bulky ddtar also chips Claydol for Raikou (or can sweep through a Claydol that Raikou chipped) and sets up on Blissey, especially Calm Mind Blissey, that Raikou forces in.

Salamence, on the other hand, can exploit Dugtrio's EQ lock to either chip an answer or set up Dragon Dance after Dugtrio gets a trap. Furthermore, ddmence shares checks (Swampert, waters in general) with ddtar, meaning that one can chip a check so that they other can sweep. Salamence also appreciates the way that Raikou chips enemy Tyranitar and Metagross. Because spikes teams are reliant on getting spikes up early, the rest of the team can chip Skarmory early so that ddmence can sweep through it later.

I see this team right now as overloading Claydol -- all three threats so far are "soft checked" by Claydol, and yet Claydol will be hard pressed to take out more than one of them. Jirachi adds to this theme. I've chosen a very bulky spread with 36 defense EVs because this spread allows Jirachi to always live Jolly Dugtrio EQ from full, creating a situation where Jirachi can be used to dispatch Dugtrio to enable a Raikou sweep. 248 HP also gives Jirachi a winning matchup from full against Blissey. This bulk is useful for checking Aerodactyl -- I don't really like Swampert so I want Jirachi to be able to function as a rock resist.

The next member is Metagross, who is able to explode on waters to enable a sweep from Salamence or Tyranitar. Because I'm running the mixed set, I don't need Magneton or a spinner to handle Skarmory.

The final member is Suicune. The team didn't have a strong check to fire types or Salamence, and Suicune fixes that problem defensively, and provides additional ddtar insurance to boot. Offensively, Metagross often explodes on Zapdos or Celebi, and Suicune can sweep many teams after that happens.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the submissions!!! Again, you can vote in this thread by posting your preferred options in a ranked pairs order.
Voting ends April 13th.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-760409

I am now in top 8 of seasonal thanks to goofy lil kou : )

I'm not much of a builder, but I figure I would try to vote. I played a few dozen games with these teams on ladder. I've not got the knack of analyzing teams at a glance. Normally, I have to stick with a team for a while in order to feel like I know what's going on with it. But I just thought I'd try something different and run a handful of games with each of these. So understanding that I'm going to be missing some of what's cool about each of these, here's my vote:

F > G > A > C > D > E > B

I'm sure that order would flop around given a few more games with each. A lot of my reticence around posting a vote is because I don't want to rank somebody last hah. I value the explanations of a team's objectives, and tried to see an interesting gameplan more than unique inclusions.

Yama+Skarm Hazard Stack ft. Donphan

https://pokepast.es/988cdb34b2d02ada

Good heavens, it's time to burn down the kitchen again!

When I saw Hariyama, two things stood out to me. Knock Off and Whirlwind. I felt like this would work on a Hazard Stack team because Knock Off can get rid of Boots of Leftovers, and Whirlwind can do Whirlwind things and phase things pretty well. Next we needed a Spiker, and this was an obvious choice, it had to be Skarmory. Skarmory has a pretty standard set if I do say so myself, but it sets up Spikes and does Skarmory things. I needed a Spinblocker next, and to be honest, the only real option is Gengar. It has coverage for all OU spinners, and Wisp for more utility. Donphan? You may be asking, why Donphan? Donphan is the only "decent" Pokémon with both Rapid Spin and Roar (no Pokémon has both Rapid Spin and Whirlwind). Donphan is running a bulky set that is a bit standard to what I could find. Aerodactyl has a standard Choice Band set that is meant to go to town after the opponent has been chipped down. I was also considering SubSalac or SubLiechi, but decided to just use Banded because that was a bit "easier" to use. And finally, Vaporeon. What does that one do? It provides a Water and Ice switchin for Donphan and Aerodactyl, while also providing Wish support and spreading Toxic.

I think this team is better than my last lmao, and at the very least, it's not that crazy

Hariyama+Celebi Offensive TSS