We may have a new king of NU

Alright, so today I decided to make my NU team serious business and do some research into the metagame. While I formerly had a lead Gligar, due to my love of his older brother Gliscor and he has seen some play in NU well, I realized that it was too slow and fragile for it to work well as a lead. In addition, as much as I loved Vespiquen as a tank, which it worked brilliantly as if Rocks isn't up, it didn't actually -do- anything, and against a team with anything that can stall better, its just dead weight. Lastly, I had Probopass as a physical wall, but its huge weakness to EG was also making it dead weight since it didn't wall anything actually attacking physically and didn't do enough damage to make up for it. The lack of Steels in the format also made its ability worthless.

So, first of all, I dropped Probopass for a bulky water. The choice was easy, really, since bulky waters are always brilliant and the metagame has access to some particularly good ones (relatively speaking). The format limits it the Wailord, Gastrodon, Whiscash and Quagsire. Since Quagsire had seen some play in UU and its so damn cute, I could hardly resist it. Plus, with the new HG/SS moves, Recover makes him quite an effective bulky water. I did briefly consider Gastrodon, but its physical defence made it too weak as a wall, and its special defence wasn't much higher when it could be hit by alot of things for at least neutral. So, here's my new Quagsire set:

Quagsire (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP/96 Atk/160 Def
Relaxed nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Recover
- Protect

Earthquake for mad stab points, Toxic for the huge potential damage, more so with Recover. Recover because it makes Quagsire so much more effective at tanking damage, even when you don't predict water moves and switch in. Protect is useful I feel for scouting Choice and accelerating Toxic damage. I'm considering Waterfall over Protect possibly, as my mindgames may be getting better and I'll require Protect less.

Next we move to the lead. Gligar is, despite being cute, absurdly fragile and can't afford to take hits, but unlike Gliscor doesn't have a high enough base speed to get away with that. As a former primarily Ubers player, I recognised a former champion falling down to NU, in the form of Primeape. Primeape, in Ubers, serves primarily as a Darkrai counter, due to being able to fall asleep, hitting for super-effective with STAB. However, in NU terms, its a relatively fast lead and learns Taunt and U-Turn, both useful for scouting and preventing spikes, and his ability of not being able to sleep is still very effective. Thus, I present my Primeape set:

Primeape (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Vital Spirit
EVs: 32 HP/226 Atk/252 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- U-turn
- Taunt
- Close Combat
- Punishment

Close Combat is obvious STAB, hitting for huge damage. Punishment isn't necessary, but I feel it makes him a nice counter for potential stat boosters.

Lastly, we get to Vespiquen. Vespiquen's slot wasn't entirely necessary, as all it did was defend and failed to defend anything properly without Wish. While it defends really, really well for a bug/flying type (commonly seen as useless, next to bug/poison), it couldn't do anything with its powerful defensive position. Thus, I chose to drop it for my most interesting choice, I feel. Behold, the wrath of Cursing Bibarel:

Bibarel (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Simple
EVs: 252 HP/160 Def/96 SDef
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave
- Return
- Curse

Taunt makes other stat boosters ineffective, TWave makes you outrun regardless of Curse, Return is a powerful STAB move, and Curse is utterly insane combined with Simple. +2 Atk and +2 Def in a single move (albeit with -2 speed)is insane on an already slow pokemon.

I'll write up the other three pokemon who already had their slots sometime later, since this post is probably getting a bit long and I can't be bothered at the moment. If you're unaware, they're a support Armaldo and a mixed Seviper and Charizard to fill out my attacking slots.