SM UU Scizor UU Balance

[Mrsunshinesprinkles]

Hello friends, new here. I've been messing around Sun and Moon UU for the past two weeks- building teams, consulting the Smogon discord, getting smashed, then starting over. The team I have here now is something I've been quite happy with. I'd like to know if it looks alright, or if I can make tweaks and adjustments to make it better.

Scizor @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 204 Atk / 48 SpD / 4 Spe
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Swords Dance
- Roost
The best Pokemon on the tier, so I slapped it in here. This variant of Scizor serves as a potential wincon that provides defensive utility, thanks to its typing and bulk, and can even revenge kill mons in a pinch. I chose Superpower so Scizor could comfortably fuck up steel types that its partner in crime, Mega Altaria, doesn't appreciate. Superpower and Z-Superpower also fuck up many Pokemon who think they have a free lunch with the metal bug, such as Rotom-Heat and Volcanion. Scizor's Bullet Punch also naturally checks a few of the scariest offensive 'mons in the UU tier, such as Terrakion, Altaria and Aerodactyl .Copy-pasta'd the set on smogdex, as I did with every other set here because i hate building shit for myself.

Altaria @ Altarianite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 72 HP / 252 Atk / 184 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Facade
- Earthquake
- Roost
Secondary wincon and arguably the best mega pokemon in the tier, at the moment. Scizor and Altaria are meant to create opportunities for one another when the matchup isn't in either's favor. When the opponent's Scizor is dead, this thing can go off and murder entire teams. Dragon/Fairy is a typing that does wonders for this thing offensively and defensively. I was put on to using Facade for MAlt, as it punishes pokemon that fish for the scald burn or Will-O-Wisp, and can still hit decently, even if it's weaker than Return. Earthquake can turn things like Alolan Muk or Doublade to dust, with a few boosts. Roost is to keep Altaria healthy throughout the game, and out of range from revenge killers with priority.

Amoonguss @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 176 Def / 80 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spore
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Clear Smog
- Giga Drain

Primarina is the worst so I wanted a designated Primarina switch-in. Of course, there's more to Amoongus than that: Spore is an incredible move that can help in giving free turns to either of my designated wincons. On top of being a check to Primarina, Amoongus can also aid the effort to keep other threats like Cobalion and opposing Mega Altaria variants at bay, thanks to its typing and Clear Smog. Hidden Power Fire is, of course, for Scizor since Scizor is the best Pokemon in the tier. It can also chip away at it with Rocky Helmet and doesn't take too much damage from U-turn or Bullet Punch that it can't just heal away with Regenerator.

Rotom-Heat @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 236 HP / 20 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Defog
- Volt Switch
- Overheat
- Toxic
I feel like whenever I build a UU team, Rotom-H has been a given in 99 percent of them. This is my designated switch-in to Mamoswine, Moltres and Scizor- two threats that can potentially eviscerate the rest of my key members- especially the first one. Rotom also serves as a bulky pivot to give free switches for Scizor and Altaria- something both Pokemon appreciate immensely. Lastly, Rotom is also my designated defogger- which it can do really well, as a lot of hazard setters really don't appreciate letting it in for free.

Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Dark Pulse
- U-turn
- Draco Meteor
I usually choose Krookodile as my scarfer of choice and call it a day (it might be better for this team as well), but I've been having a lot of fun with the Choice Scarf Hydreigon set. Draco Meteor, even unboosted, is an amazing nuke that can catch faster, frailer threats off guard. Fire Blast is for Steel-types that think they can switch into sponge Draco, while Dark Pulse is just good, solid STAB, in general, that is hyper spammable. U-turn is to punish predicted fairy switch-ins, to let Scizor or Amoongus in for free.

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 176 SpD
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Slack Off
- Toxic

This is my Stealth Rock setter, and designated ground type. Hippo helps block Mega Manectric's volt switches, and doesn't take damage from overheat that it can't just heal off. Even without full defense investment, Hippo is good for handling unboosted physical threats decently well. EQ is solid STAB, Toxic is for opposing Rotom-Heat that think they can come in and defog the rocks for free, while Slack Off is good ol' reliable recovery that can help Hippo stay healthy throughout the game.

Things I despise to play against

Nasty Plot Infernape: A well-played Infernape is generally bad news for my team. My single best switch in is Altaria, which has to go mega and is messed up by a Z-Focus Blast regardless. At full Hydreigon can eat a boosted vacuum wave, and can evaporate the Ape with Draco Meteor, but that's only a check, and that leaves my Hydreigon at around 26 percent. Hippo can eat a focus blast or fire blast, but won't take a Z-Focus Blast very well at all.

Mega Sharpedo: Mega Sharpedo hits my entire team for huge damage. Speed Boost makes it faster than Hydreigon after a protect, which it can then proceed to mess up with an Ice Fang that does 75 percent minimum. Ice Fang, in general, messes me up since I am stacking 4 Ice-weak pokemon together. With hazards up, things can get ugly incredibly fast.

Quagsire Stall: I have to play out of my mind when facing a team with stall and Quagsire in particular. I can't boost up and break it down when it ignores my boosts and can proceed to either Scald burn me or Toxic.

Choice Specs Primarina: Sadly, even with Amoongus, Primarina can still pose a threat. Even if it's not STAB, Choice Specs Psychic or Ice Beam can do a healthy amount to the Pokeball mushroom. In general Hydro Pump and Moonblast is amazing coverage that can evaporate the rest of my team other than Amoongus.

Moltres: Firebird is a good check to both my Scizor and Altaria- Fire Blast roasts Scizor, while Z-Hurricane eviscerates almost every other member of my team. Rotom-Heat and Stealth Rocks doesn't make it as much of a problem as the aforementioned threats. If I play my Rotom poorly and wear it down quickly, however, Moltres can go crazy.

 

[Estarossa]

Hi this is an interesting team you have here Mrsunshinesprinkles . Glad that you chose to play UU, and i hope you stick with it cause it's the best tier :)

Before we go into changing anything major, there's a couple of very small changes I would first recommend to two of the sets, irregardless of any further changes to be made to the team.

Minor Changes:

(Move Change) : The first minor change I will make here is to suggest that you change clear smog to sludge bomb. With a facade altaria on team already, you have little to fear from suicune (of which clear smog only helps against the rarer CroCune, not VinCune), and sludge bomb's greater power tends to come in handy vs opposing fairies and also lets you hit incoming celebi's hard.

(EV + Item Change) : The next change I would recommend is to change the speed EVs on rotom to 248 instead of 252, putting the extra 4 in spA. This allows you to underspeed opposing rotom-heat's to get the slower volt switch off, without speed tieing with pokemon such as nidoking. I would also suggest changing the Iapapa berry to a Wiki berry, as these are functionally identical but Wiki berry will confuse bug bite scizors.


Ok so now onto the main rate.

Two things i immediately noticed while trying to test your team is that your amoongus matchup is really bad, and that your latias matchup is also a bit painful with the lack of u-turn on scizor, since you can't directly swap into hydreigon, and altaria can lose to psyshock sets / ice beam sets if its been damaged enough already.

Your celebi matchup is also really bad if hydreigon gets killed, and even while its alive you can't risk directly swapping into it incase of a dazzling gleam. Scizor can survive a +2 z-psychic, but just as with latias, you have no way of really hurting it.

So the first thing I would recommend here to patch up these two problems is a change of scizor set. The change of set will still give you a nice nuke to use in hippowdon matchups too like fightinium does, so this won't force you to rely on toxic'ing hippowdon still.

Minor Change:

(Set Change) : I therefore recommend changing scizor to a bulky SD set with buginium-z. This is a cool tech that lets you OHKO amoongus with your z-move at +2, and the given EVs allow you to survive +2 z-psychic and +1 gigavolt havoc from celebi and latias respectively. This set still plays very much the same way, but it also gives you a a momentum volt-turn core with amoongus, and due to u-turn can be played much more as a bulky pivot while still having the ability to sweep. This also allows scizor to serve as an additional knock off sponge for the team, which will be important for one of the changes i make later.



At this point you felt very weak to moltres and nasty plot lucario, and to nasty plot infernape too if your altaria isnt at full. You also have quite a bad terrakion matchup, as scizor can't OHKO it with bullet punch, and hippowdon does not deal with fightinium sets, and gets 2hkoed by banded close combat.

To deal with this I did a three way swap at this point.

Major Changes:

->

: The first change was to change rotom-heat for slowbro. This makes us lose defog, which I will add in later, but in turn offers us a solid answer to terrakion, lucario, and non grass knot infernape. I chose a block set, which gives your altaria some help vs stall, and lets you break bulky teams. Colbur berry allows you to stomach a dark type attack and weaken knock off on this set. It also improves your matchup vs mamoswine, as rotom struggles to consistently swap in on mamoswine, especially if it knocks off its wiki berry. It also forms a nice regenerator core with amoongus.

->

: The next change was to give you back defog. I therefore swapped hippowdon for gligar. The given EV spread allows you to live 2 banded stone edges from terrakion after stealth rocks, while maximising your spdef with the remaining EVs. U-turn was chosen in the last slot here to keep the momentum core that scizor and rotom were originally forming, but knock off or toxic are also potential options here if you prefer them.

->

: The final step was to give you back stealth rocks. Nihilego does this while giving you a solid swap in to moltres and togekiss. I chose a protect nihilego with two attacks and black sludge, as this allows it to more consistently deal with pokemon such as moltres through recovery, while protect allows you to scout choice locked pokemon for moves such as pursuit, while giving you extra recovery. STAB moves were chosen as the two attacks, but grass knot / thunderbolt are options over power gem in order to better deal with ground types and bulky waters. Nihilego is also capable of living a +2 focus blast from infernape if necessary to revenge it, but it needs about 30% chip first and can't live the z move, so only use this as a back up.

Final Team

Click sprites for team importable.​

This is the end team for you. It now lacks the direct speed control of your scarf hydreigon from before, but you still have bullet punch from scizor, and nihilego with its nice base 103 speed naturally outspeeds threatening pokemon such as celebi, which is dangerous if its a HP fire variant, or if scizor gets heavily chipped. The much greater bulk of the team how helps to offset the fact you are now slower in general.

Your manectric matchup is now not as nice due to swapping hippowdon, as gligar does not like swapping in on HP ices, but the existance of gligar will still make enemy manectrics hesistant to click volt switch.

Your scizor matchup is a little harder now, but amoongus will handle all sets except life orb bug bite and the buginium-z set your scizor is running. Life orb bug bite sets will however struggle to break past gligar, while buginium-z sets can be forced to use u-turn on slowbro once they blow theirr z move, which can allow you to double into something else eg. gligar while forcing them out, and in the matchup between a buginium-z scizor and your own, it typically comes down to who can get to +6 and use z-u-turn first.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

 

[Mrsunshinesprinkles]

Hi this is an interesting team you have here Mrsunshinesprinkles . Glad that you chose to play UU, and i hope you stick with it cause it's the best tier :)

Before we go into changing anything major, there's a couple of very small changes I would first recommend to two of the sets, irregardless of any further changes to be made to the team.

Minor Changes:

(Move Change) : The first minor change I will make here is to suggest that you change clear smog to sludge bomb. With a facade altaria on team already, you have little to fear from suicune (of which clear smog only helps against the rarer CroCune, not VinCune), and sludge bomb's greater power tends to come in handy vs opposing fairies and also lets you hit incoming celebi's hard.

(EV + Item Change) : The next change I would recommend is to change the speed EVs on rotom to 248 instead of 252, putting the extra 4 in spA. This allows you to underspeed opposing rotom-heat's to get the slower volt switch off, without speed tieing with pokemon such as nidoking. I would also suggest changing the Iapapa berry to a Wiki berry, as these are functionally identical but Wiki berry will confuse bug bite scizors.


Ok so now onto the main rate.

Two things i immediately noticed while trying to test your team is that your amoongus matchup is really bad, and that your latias matchup is also a bit painful with the lack of u-turn on scizor, since you can't directly swap into hydreigon, and altaria can lose to psyshock sets / ice beam sets if its been damaged enough already.

Your celebi matchup is also really bad if hydreigon gets killed, and even while its alive you can't risk directly swapping into it incase of a dazzling gleam. Scizor can survive a +2 z-psychic, but just as with latias, you have no way of really hurting it.

So the first thing I would recommend here to patch up these two problems is a change of scizor set. The change of set will still give you a nice nuke to use in hippowdon matchups too like fightinium does, so this won't force you to rely on toxic'ing hippowdon still.

Minor Change:

(Set Change) : I therefore recommend changing scizor to a bulky SD set with buginium-z. This is a cool tech that lets you OHKO amoongus with your z-move at +2, and the given EVs allow you to survive +2 z-psychic and +1 gigavolt havoc from celebi and latias respectively. This set still plays very much the same way, but it also gives you a a momentum volt-turn core with amoongus, and due to u-turn can be played much more as a bulky pivot while still having the ability to sweep. This also allows scizor to serve as an additional knock off sponge for the team, which will be important for one of the changes i make later.



At this point you felt very weak to moltres and nasty plot lucario, and to nasty plot infernape too if your altaria isnt at full. You also have quite a bad terrakion matchup, as scizor can't OHKO it with bullet punch, and hippowdon does not deal with fightinium sets, and gets 2hkoed by banded close combat.

To deal with this I did a three way swap at this point.

Major Changes:

->

: The first change was to change rotom-heat for slowbro. This makes us lose defog, which I will add in later, but in turn offers us a solid answer to terrakion, lucario, and non grass knot infernape. I chose a block set, which gives your altaria some help vs stall, and lets you break bulky teams. Colbur berry allows you to stomach a dark type attack and weaken knock off on this set. It also improves your matchup vs mamoswine, as rotom struggles to consistently swap in on mamoswine, especially if it knocks off its wiki berry. It also forms a nice regenerator core with amoongus.

View attachment 181069->

: The next change was to give you back defog. I therefore swapped hippowdon for gligar. The given EV spread allows you to live 2 banded stone edges from terrakion after stealth rocks, while maximising your spdef with the remaining EVs. U-turn was chosen in the last slot here to keep the momentum core that scizor and rotom were originally forming, but knock off or toxic are also potential options here if you prefer them.

View attachment 181070->

: The final step was to give you back stealth rocks. Nihilego does this while giving you a solid swap in to moltres and togekiss. I chose a protect nihilego with two attacks and black sludge, as this allows it to more consistently deal with pokemon such as moltres through recovery, while protect allows you to scout choice locked pokemon for moves such as pursuit, while giving you extra recovery. STAB moves were chosen as the two attacks, but grass knot / thunderbolt are options over power gem in order to better deal with ground types and bulky waters. Nihilego is also capable of living a +2 focus blast from infernape if necessary to revenge it, but it needs about 30% chip first and can't live the z move, so only use this as a back up.

Final Team

Click sprites for team importable.​

This is the end team for you. It now lacks the direct speed control of your scarf hydreigon from before, but you still have bullet punch from scizor, and nihilego with its nice base 103 speed naturally outspeeds threatening pokemon such as celebi, which is dangerous if its a HP fire variant, or if scizor gets heavily chipped. The much greater bulk of the team how helps to offset the fact you are now slower in general.

Your manectric matchup is now not as nice due to swapping hippowdon, as gligar does not like swapping in on HP ices, but the existance of gligar will still make enemy manectrics hesistant to click volt switch.

Your scizor matchup is a little harder now, but amoongus will handle all sets except life orb bug bite and the buginium-z set your scizor is running. Life orb bug bite sets will however struggle to break past gligar, while buginium-z sets can be forced to use u-turn on slowbro once they blow theirr z move, which can allow you to double into something else eg. gligar while forcing them out, and in the matchup between a buginium-z scizor and your own, it typically comes down to who can get to +6 and use z-u-turn first.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

thank you. I'll try this new team out in the future. And UU has been pretty fun. This comment has almost nil competitive bearing, but the top mons in UU for sure look cooler than the top OU mons lol.

Your added observations re: my base team's weaknesses were spot on. Celebi was a massive problem without hydrei, and Amoongus kind of just took a pokemon with spore or began chipping at my own amoongus with sludge bomb.

I'll miss having a dedicated scarfer and scizor answer, but i suppose i can overcome it with smart play + this new added bulk to the team.

The scizor on this set is serious. I'm presuming you meant adamant, since that's what it says on the smogdex?

Rotom-Heat, hydreigon, and z-superpower scizor were also my answers to blwoing pasts steel types that usually can give scizor and esp altaria a hard time. I suppose now, Block Slowbro + Gligar + chipping away at those steel types with hazards and the like, to put in in M-Alt's boosted EQ range is what i'll do to chip away at mons like Mega Aggron, and Doublade (I was about to list cobalion but i have a whole ass slowbro here, who hard walls it)?

thank you for the help.

 

[Estarossa]

thank you. I'll try this new team out in the future. And UU has been pretty fun. This comment has almost nil competitive bearing, but the top mons in UU for sure look cooler than the top OU mons lol.

Your added observations re: my base team's weaknesses were spot on. Celebi was a massive problem without hydrei, and Amoongus kind of just took a pokemon with spore or began chipping at my own amoongus with sludge bomb.

I'll miss having a dedicated scarfer and scizor answer, but i suppose i can overcome it with smart play + this new added bulk to the team.

The scizor on this set is serious. I'm presuming you meant adamant, since that's what it says on the smogdex?

Rotom-Heat, hydreigon, and z-superpower scizor were also my answers to blwoing pasts steel types that usually can give scizor and esp altaria a hard time. I suppose now, Block Slowbro + Gligar + chipping away at those steel types with hazards and the like, to put in in M-Alt's boosted EQ range is what i'll do to chip away at mons like Mega Aggron, and Doublade (I was about to list cobalion but i have a whole ass slowbro here, who hard walls it)?

thank you for the help.

Yes apologies it's meant to be adamant, I have fixed that now in the original post and the pokepaste!

Amoongus is still your dedicated scizor answer in a way, rotom-heat also lost to certain sets too like z-superpower and life orb quick attack, you just have your answers spread out a little more depending on sets now.

While you won't have a dedicated scarfer now, two of the bigger problems for your original team in infernape and lucario had the ability to blow past scarf hydreigon with +2 vacuum waves, which actually limited some of its actual use to the team, but yes the added bulk should help with this.

An option if you like is to run 176 SpA and 80 Hp EVs instead on nihilego, as this gives you speed boosts, but this is generally only recommended when running 3 attacks as with just STABs you dont have the coverage to make use of this.

Block slowbro does a number on bulky steels in general yes, but you will have to chip away at them a bit more than before unfortunately. Z-superpower scizor was unfortunately just making the celebi, amoongus and latias matchups too hard. In general these bulky steels you mentioned simply can't do anything to the regenerator core of slowbro + amoongus however, and will be punished for clicking their steel stabs against amoongus's rocky helmet. While this is now a slower matchup vs them, it is in some respects a much cleaner one.

(Worth noting here that heattom and hydreigon also were much easier to take advantage of by opposing enemy steels, especially since a lot of them are paired with a cleric such as florges/sylveon/umbreon which can tank overheats/fblasts, and find out what you lock yourself into on hydreigon, and also heal back the steels in both cases especially since overheat lowers your spA.)