Gen 3 so i've been doing quite well with this team after getting back after a few months.

[dayren]

@ Leftovers ** Overmindsky
Trait: Clear Body
EVs: 252 HP / 168 Atk / 16 Def / 72 SAtk
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Explosion
- Earthquake
- Meteor Mash
- Pursuit

this is mainly to catch gengar so that snorlax can use earthquake to sweep. hidden power grass is just a filler to catch swampert switch-ins, since i have magneton for skarm, and milotic and gyarados for suicune. i could use some help with the ev spread.

(M) @ Leftovers ** Patty
Trait: Thick Fat
EVs: 144 HP / 64 Atk / 136 Def / 164 SDef
Careful Nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Return
- Curse
- Earthquake
- Rest

Sponges special attacks, and sweeps. earthquake scares off boah, and usually viltar as well after one curse.

(M) @ Choice Band ** Xahlior
Trait: Guts
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Focus Punch
- Megahorn
- Rock Slide
- Sleep Talk

this thing has served me very well, since nothing (except maybe dusclops and weezing) takes choice band megahorns without losing a huge chunk of hp. sleep talk is quite fun, as it turns a lot of 2hkos into ohkos.

(F) @ Leftovers ** Zeliox
Trait: Marvel Scale
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 44 SAtk
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Hypnosis
- Ice Beam
- Recover
- Surf

just milotic.

(M) @ Leftovers ** Episodes
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 168 HP / 240 Atk / 100 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Taunt

works better than salamence and dragonite, since it isn't walled by the bulk waters (which i see a lot more than zapdos ).

@ Leftovers ** Saturn
Trait: Magnet Pull
EVs: 124 HP / 188 Spd / 196 SAtk
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Protect
- Thunderbolt
- Toxic

my team is quite physical, so this gets it working.

===================================

some things are bog standard because they work well. i haven't really had any major problems with any particular type of team yet. though gengar kind of fucks with me if it lands a hypnosis on my metagross.

updated list of things that this team has had trouble with:
gengar (if it packs status), weezing, metal sound zapdos, and cb medicham.

 

[Umby]

I'd call Jirachi somewhat of an issue. Once it gets going, it's gonna be hard to stop. Snorlax could deal out some heavy damage after a Curse, but it's going to be up against a +1 or +2 STABed Psychic, and we know how well that could turn out. You might consider going Earthquake over HP Grass on Metagross or perhaps Metal Sound on Magneton.

In the long run, you could sacrifice any combination of Heracross, Snorlax, and Metagross (Gyarados will probably be outrun and Tbolted on sight) and that ends Jirachi right there, but my previous advice is aimed a bit more at a conservative style of play.

 

[Heysup]

I like this team, i dont think there is anything wrong with it other than Metagross's EV spread, which im not sure of so i cant help you=p.


Edit: Well...maybe a DDgyara could cause a problem

 

[Hey Oh]

i would take hp grass off of metagross and add earthquake

My reasoning behind this is because the only poke you have that doesnt like seeing swampert is magneton, the poke that isnt supposed to do much to begin with. Earthquake adds the great option of being able to hit magnetons, metagross, and jirachi.

i'm also not really sure the point of protect on magneton, but i realize magneton is always personal preference so w/e.

To be honest, the pokemon i see hurting this team the most is weezing. Snorlax/hera/that meta will never beat it 1v1. And gyara cant risk getting burned so the sludge bombs would probably get it. Milo will get annoyed at its burn over time. I usually dont use body slam, but i do feel it is the right move on this team just to have another way to try to beat weezing. It seems you usually have to go to magneton vs weezing, so maybe substitute would be nice on mag to beat the wisp/sludge bomb combo.

otherwise i like the team. it seems well designed to defeat most stall teams that dont run anything out of the ordinary.

 

[Iggeh]

I'd just like to know what on earth viltar is.

Also all the cool people don't run any speed on CBCross.

And even with split defenses I still don't think putting HP EVs into Snorlax is wise... not sure though.

 

[ABC-Trainer]

Weezing walls all of your physical pokemon so put Facade over Sleep talk on hera.

CB normals will beat the living shit out of your team.

 

[Heysup]

Weezing walls all of your physical pokemon so put Facade over Sleep talk on hera.

CB normals will beat the living shit out of your team.

He has 2 normal resists, One of which has 252 hp evs.....How does any sort of normal attack break through that?

 

[ABC-Trainer]

Is that post even serious?

Let's imagine that someone has a choice banded Tauros. Tauros can come in easily on Gyara, Heracross mispredict, Milotic (if low on HP) or even Magneton if he has a chance at finishing the game.

Return rips through Snorlax, Hera, Milo and Magneton. It puts a dent in Gyara after intimidate, and Gyara can't do anything to him. Earthquake easily takes care of his metagross which is his only normal "resist" in the sense of the word (Magneton doesn't count, he gets 2hkoed easy).

 

[Umby]

One of those Normal resists gets raped by CB attacks regardless, while the other one isn't consistently reliable as a physical wall. We can also talk about how said normals constantly run Earthquake or Focus Punch, but then people will start arguing about "I can predict this" and various other turn-by-turn scenario based logic.

 

[ABC-Trainer]

Contemplate putting Rest on Metagross and 252 hp + def evs on both Milo and Snorlax.

 

[Lutra]

Contemplate putting Rest on Metagross and 252 hp + def evs on both Milo and Snorlax.

OMG you better put def evs and hp on everything while you are at it! Your pokes will be continuously walled, allowing TAUROS to beat you to a pulp! 2 normal resists and 3 fat pokes will not stop this monster!

 

[Heysup]

Is that post even serious?

Let's imagine that someone has a choice banded Tauros. Tauros can come in easily on Gyara, Heracross mispredict, Milotic (if low on HP) or even Magneton if he has a chance at finishing the game.

Return rips through Snorlax, Hera, Milo and Magneton. It puts a dent in Gyara after intimidate, and Gyara can't do anything to him. Earthquake easily takes care of his metagross which is his only normal "resist" in the sense of the word (Magneton doesn't count, he gets 2hkoed easy).

Bolded parts where LOL should be added.

 

[Lutra]

Anyway very good team, I was looking at this yesterday. I like protect on Magneton, it gives you that advantage in predicting CBers and recovering as a result. Definitely what Hey Oh said, Earthquake on Gross is only going to make the team better. I would also think about changing your lax spread if I was you.

This is a spread I've come up with : 12 HP/ 224 Atk/ 152 Def / 120 SpDef Impish Nature.

This allows you to always OHKO duggy with Body Slam and have enough attack to usually 2HKO Jirachi. 152 def with impish nature allows you with a curse, not to be 2HKOed by Stab Choice Band Meta's Meteor Mash and is likewise handy to take non-crit STAB megahorns from Heracross (Also with one curse.) The remaining evs put into spdef allow you to not be beaten if Jirachi Calm Minds, Psychics to cause a spdef drop and then psychics again. Though generally your lax will have to die unless you can bring it in on a dusclops or sleeping pokemon. And of course, 12 HP gives maximum leftovers recovery.

 

[Thorns]

is this guy serious? aside from the 'Tauros has a CB but can change moves!' idea, Facade does crap damage compared to Megahorn (I hate saying Megahorn)

 

[dayren]

thanks for the comments. uh aside from the weezing that's mentioned, i have not had anything else mess this team up completely. i don't really know what to say about the tauros comment. it's not like return on its own rips through my entire team. plus, the damage of a choice band earthquake, iron tail, hp ghost (or whatever it packs besides return) coming from tauros on milotic isn't exactly decent. as others have pointed out, metagross takes the returns without much sweat. but yeah, i'll try not to rockslide with hera, as it takes three (ohemgee i'll never get that many rockslides in? =/) of those to finish tauros off. mmm oh yeah i'll try really hard not to forget what i have protect on magneton for as well.

in short, saying x pokemon with choiceband beats a certain team when all the needed resists are present to prevent such a situation from occuring is basically saying, "oh you're screwed if you mispredict this/that", which is usually the case when facing any team with a choicebander.

 

[Lutra]

I realised I was talking rubbish about Jirachi. When Jirachi does a spdef drop on snorlax, you're never going to survive its onslaught unless you solely focus in attack (by 2HKOing it) and a mass of spdef. Therefore I've changed my spread to allow it to counter Zapdos well.

12 HP/ 152 Def/ 120 Atk/ 224 SpDef (Impish as well)

If you're wondering why the smogon standard curselax set is the way is, it's because the evs have been crammed on their. Basically the person who came up with the spread didn't do the conventional way of coming up with evs - what does it survive? etc. Like he/she didn't do lowest possible HP with max leftovers recovery and enough def to survive such and such. Rather, it is just an abstract value which crams as many relevant evs on it as possible. There is no better alternative than that spread because you can't make the spdef high enough to do it with low HP, so that's one instance when an adamant nature is used, that HP is actually beneficial. But if a defensive nature was used, HP would be practically void. Also, the defenses have to be fairly equal for it to be beneficial in the first place.

 

[Umby]

I don't see what's wrong with the argument that CB STABed Return puts a serious dent in this team.

 

[ABC-Trainer]

is this guy serious? aside from the 'Tauros has a CB but can change moves!' idea, Facade does crap damage compared to Megahorn (I hate saying Megahorn)

???????????? Facade hits WEEZING. Weezing walls everyone else. But good job for being able to calculate base power. Unfortunately you forgot that when something is not very effective its power is halved.

I do admit I forgot about Protect on magneton which would help to stop CBers but still Tauros is a legitimate threat and I don't see your team handling it very well.

Also I'd look out for CB zapdos

 

[dayren]

because cb return does 27% damage to my metagross at best. and milotic takes pretty much everything else without sweat.

as for cb zapdos: except for the first drill peck in on snorlax, it's still prediction. metagross takes no more than 21% from the drill pecks, magneton has 4x resist, and it's most likely not ev'd for powerful thunderbolts.

 

[ABC-Trainer]

Ok well I guess you're not allowed to say that a team has a weakness to any CBer anymore as long as one pokemon on their team resists its stab move. sorry for wasting your time

 

[Heysup]

its mainly the fact that you are saying, this cb pokemon has X move for Y pokemon, and A move for B pokemon. CB as in Choice Band. It can only use one move at once, of course it can hit SOME pokemon hard, if it predicts correct. Prediction isnt a team weakness.

 

[Pocket]

Gengar is still very annoying to your team. Don't forget that Fire Punch on Gengar is a viable choice, not to mention it can just as well pack Will-O-Wisp to screw your Metagross. Not having a solid Sleep Absorber other than Heracross, who may accidentally switch into a Fire Punch instead of Hypnosis, puts you in a rough spot. A quick fix would be adding the standard Resttalk Zapdos. It's only 3HKOed by Ice Punch, which would provide an easy switch-in for your Metagross. It is a much more reliable status absorber than Heracross. If you don't want to lose the power of Heracross, you can replace Gyarados for Zapdos. Losing Gyarados loses some coverage against Celebi and Intimidate support, but Zapdos and Milotic can handle most things that Gyarados had, like Metagross, Swampert, and other Waters, not to mention opposing Gyarados.

I also agree Metagross' necessity for EQ. EQ complements so well with Meteor Mash, hitting hard Electric, Fire, Steel, Water types hard from its awesome Attack. Swampert isn't much of a problem for your team anyways.

Physical threats that I find difficult to handle with this teams are MoPcross, CB Fighting, and DD / CB Tar. Heracross really have no safe switch-ins, but once Snorlax Rests, MoPCross can potentially sweep the entire team. DD / CB Tar is also hard, but you can play around it.

 

[ABC-Trainer]

its mainly the fact that you are saying, this cb pokemon has X move for Y pokemon, and A move for B pokemon. CB as in Choice Band. It can only use one move at once, of course it can hit SOME pokemon hard, if it predicts correct. Prediction isnt a team weakness.

When the only pokemon that are able to recover are those that are unable to live through the CB pokes onslaught, the team has a CB weakness.

 

[Hot Nikkels]

is this guy serious? aside from the 'Tauros has a CB but can change moves!' idea, Facade does crap damage compared to Megahorn (I hate saying Megahorn)

wut?

he said Facade over Sleep Talk, people

imo Sleep Talk on Hera is pointless without a defensive spread and Rest, putting STalk on Hera just forces you to make switches you would never want to make normally, when as Pocket said you could be using a SleepTalker that can actually do it's job, stay in the game and make use of Sleep Clause. like Zapdos, or even your Metagross (I'd rather have a durable RestTalker to scare off Gengar than the small chance of one-shotting it with Pursuit and then never using the move again). With Facade you at least get the option of switching into things like Dusclops/Blissey and potentially getting a status out of it.

Yes, your team has a CB weak. Things like Normal resist don't really matter in the case of Magneton unfortunately, if you send Maggy in on something like Slaking/Tauros/Dodrio, you very much run the risk of losing your Skarmory counter, and without a spinner you'd just be screwed. If you feel that you can predict your way out of situations like that, than more power to you, I often do the same when I build teams. As long as you can recognize the weakness and be on your toes when you think someone might be packing that hard counter, then sure use the team that seems comfortable to you. After all, we would simply NEVER see the more "fun" OU pokes like Houndoom/Alakazam if people were only concerned with making 100% safe switches. Calculating risk vs reward in predictions is part of the reason why good team builders and god players aren't always tnecessarily the same.

 

[Heysup]

While i see your point, i disagree still.

Sleep Talk on Heracross is a VERY good move for many reasons:

a)Can absorb sleep, when he has no other sleep absorber.

b) Megahorns 92 power(halved from resist) to Facades 150 on weezing is a good bonus, but thats all you get, you still cant hurt Dusclops with it, you dont need another ghost immune move, so why use it imo.

c) And has unpredictable damage, that may or may not do significant damage. E.g. a heracross goes in on a hypnosis from a melotic, and gets put to sleep, The opponent sends out a Salamence to counter/set up, and gets nearly ohko with CB/Guts rock slide.


And i dont beleive a team has "CB" weak, when it immunes/resists(magneton not considered one of these) all of the possible moves. Again, ill say prediction can not be a teams weakness.