Hello everybody, my one main goal in competitive battling is, like most people, to create a top team - to get fame and recognition, and to be able to be a distinguished suspect qualifier. Actually, mainly just the latter. But still, fame and recognition wouldn't hurt. Anyways, ever since the beginning of gen 5 and the obvious dominance of weather, I vowed to try and place with a team without weather. You might see that as stubbornness, or "un-competitive", but I see it as proving a point. For how diverse would this metagame be if it was "un-competitive" to not use one of four pokemon (tar, toed, tails, hippo) on every team?
The focus of this team is basically to support a very anti-metagame pokemon who, given even just the slightest of openings, can maul through teams very unexpectedly, as people tend to underrate this threat until I even KO their gliscor with it (TBH it has happened only a few times and only low on the ladder but w/e, it makes for a good story). My team is based on the monster that is Subseed Breloom and how it wrecks many teams, weather and non-weather alike. I tried many different teams, always starting with breloom, but none seemed to work. My method is to play a team for 10-20 games, then make an adjustment or two, and to keep on playing. If after 2-3 adjustments the team is still pitiful, I scrap it and move on. Obviously, most of the time top teams tend to take time and many hours of testing in order for the creator to find a formula that works. And while that is true in most cases, this team did pretty well, IMO, and it turned out to be just the first version of a team that I threw together (sort of) on a whim. After peaking at 1309 on the smogon's official server, I fell down in rankings and made adjustments which only made the team worse. So please, I ask of smogon to rate my team and offer suggestions which I will very willingly try, because I am not in love with my team and I want to make it the best it can be. So without further ado, my team:
List of Changes:
-Changed Ice Beam to Stealth Rock on Nidoqueen
-Changed Substitute and Protect to Swords Dance and Ice Fang on Gliscor
-Changed Refresh to Substitute on Latias
-Changed Empoleon to Gastrodon
@ Leftovers
Sheer Force
252 Hp / 252 Def / 4 Sp. Def
Relaxed
-Toxic Spikes
-Earthquake
-Fire Blast
-Stealth Rock
My first versions of this team were straight-up balanced teams with no real theme and no real concrete method of assisting breloom, so after awhile I decided to try Toxic Spikes support to help defeat counters like Jellicent (not as much of a counter as an annoyance). However, do not make the mistake of thinking that my team is fully dependent on Toxic Spikes, which it is not especially because there are always those times where I run into teams with not a single member vulnerable to TS (Levitators, flyers, poison/steel pokemon, magic guard, and poison heal all do the trick). I picked Nidoqueen as my first TSer and never thought about it again, because of his unexpected utility in the OU tier, as seen in LadyBug’s RMT (though it was Gen 4, there are some similarities to the threats then and now). Good thing that Nidoqueen can still pack a punch with sheer force even if her primary role becomes moot, because she can still counter various threats like scizor, and she can threaten things like gliscor (EQ doesn’t 2HKO), forretress, skarmory, and nattorei. Nidoqueen is my lead most of the time unless there is something unpleasant in the lead position like politoed, ninetails, or thundurus. She does a pretty good job of checking tyranitar, even though it takes a chunk from ice beam, because EQ is a solid 3HKO and she will outspeed the common sassy tyranitars.
For the EV’s, max HP and Def is obvious, because Nidoqueen is meant to be a stop to a lot of physical threats (although unfortunately this generation earthquake has had resurgence and as such it doesn’t do as well against the primary physical threats). I’ve thought about adding some EV’s to Special attack to give it a little more bite, but I’m not sure exactly how many. The moves are pretty self-explanatory, Earthquake is so things like Sp. Def Tyranitar and Jirachi don’t have an easier time, and I relegated SR to something else so that Nidoqueen would not be as much of a sitting duck, with three powerful attacks.
@ Toxic Orb
Poison Heal
252 Hp / 176 Def / 80 Speed
Impish
-Swords Dance
-Ice Fang
-Earthquake
-Taunt
When I first saw this thing on the analysis, I thought it would be a godsend, but truthfully it has been surprisingly not very useful. At first it looked like another Doryuuzu check, and the more you have of those the better, and it also looked like another TS staller. However, it all looks good on paper until you realize that you aren’t playing a CPU like in the battle tower, and (most of the time) your opponent isn’t a functional idiot. Thus, their Rotom-W won’t idiotically burn all its Hydro Pump PP as so ideally described by the analysis, and usually they will switch to something that easily scares gliscor away, like lati@s or landorus or thundurus or, well, anything that flies. I am exceedingly paranoid of moles on crack, and so I am reluctant to switch gliscor for something else, but honestly gliscor isn’t that helpful, and it’s embarrassing when I have to sacrifice something just so gliscor can hit balloon doryuuzu. The number of times that I’ve had to resort to petty PP stall is very depressing for this set, especially since it doesn’t have Pressure. All suggestions are welcome.
EV’s are standard but with 8 more in speed to taunt opposing gliscor before they taunt me, and to beat those who put enough in to beat 72 speed gliscor by 1 point. The moveset is self-explanatory, with Taunt in the final spot because of the general redundancy of running toxic (especially with a sleeper on the team).
@ Leftovers
Levitate
252 Hp / 4 Sp. Att / 252 Speed
Timid
-Calm Mind
-Dragon Pulse
-Recover
-Substitute
I’ve always been a fan of Latias for previous generations, and so far in gen 5 he’s been pretty useful. Latias is a big stop to opposing Rotom-W and most Gliscor, and he checks/counters other pokemon such as Heatran and opposing Lati@s, with a perfect speed IV. I tried a similar set before but with HP fire over refresh, and while it worked decently well, it still couldn’t defeat tyranitar, the main threat, and it always lost the speed tie against opposing Lati@s. However, in testing Refresh isn’t as good as it sounds on paper. Why? Because Paralysis is usually spread by Jirachi, who, like the annoying ***** it is, will proceed to iron head it to death before I can refresh. Sleep obviously renders it useless, and I’ve realized that in the much more offensive gen 5, there are next to no sweepers who can run through a majority of teams, like in previous generations, just because of status immunity. Basically, no team relies on status as their only counter to bulky sweepers, and instead they tend to power through regardless of toxic or not. This is why the legendary Crocune also is met with less success today – Quick set-up sweepers is the name of the game in B/W, as seen by Garchomp’s, Landorus’, Doryuuzu’s, Thundurus’, and Terakion’s success in the tier. Overall this Latias set hasn’t been as effective as last generation so I might switch it to a Latios, possibly with Blue Star’s set.
EV’s are basic for all fast CM’ers because 252 Hp is efficient for optimizing defenses and max speed is important for Latias’ crucial speed tier. The last point goes into Sp. Att to pack a tad more punch while setting up. The first three moves are standard, while Refresh is, ideally, meant to provide extra set-up opportunities, but often the opponent isn’t stupid and will switch to tyranitar or scizor or doryuuzu. Or they’ll rage quit. But not often.
@ Toxic Orb
Poison Heal
252 Hp / 232 Def / 24 Speed
Impish
-Spore
-Substitute
-Leech Seed
-Focus Punch
[Insert cliché about Breloom being the star of the show, etc.] Yeah, so this guy’s good. Real good. Anyway, he’s basically solved my nattorei problems and can wall most Rotom-W, except those LO or Specs ones in the rain. I admit I haven’t tried an offensive set but seedstalling is so much more effective than hitting a few threats with seed bomb or stone edge because it allows Breloom to maul anything slower than it and it lets him stick around much longer (a good thing, at least for me). Unfortunately, despite Breloom being an awesome pokemon I occasionally play too carelessly with him and he dies to an attack I think he can survive, or he gets paralyzed by nattorei’s t-wave. Oftentimes my opponent doesn’t have a single good counter to him and he’s forced to sacrifice a pokemon to bring out latios or something with breloom’s sub down, in which case I can get rid of latios with my foolproof method and then continue wreaking havoc. I usually will play cautiously with spore, not wasting it the first opportunity I get, because a lot of the time against a good opponent spore is a one-time weapon: No good opponent will sit there and wait for their pokemon to wake up, and they can’t play smart and burn away a few turns by clever switching because of B/W’s new sleep rules. Thus I wait to sleep the most annoying guy I can, although unfortunately a lot of the time that guy is gliscor, who can’t be slept. Another reason I don’t want to use tyranitar is because his sandstorm messes with breloom’s ability to heal naturally (or unnaturally, depending on how you view toxic healing) and halves his recovery per turn. With leech seed up, often I won’t lose a point of hp, or a very small amount, when I make a sub so I can stall out enemies like jirachi or scizor. On an earlier version of this team, I used paralysis support instead, and though it gave me even less opportunities to spore (more guys get paralyzed than poisoned), it was arguably more useful because with a speed advantage, breloom is so much more effective plus he can occasionally get a free sub. So in conclusion this guy is a major underrated threat, try him out and with proper team support and a couple opportunities to switch in he will eat a team alive.
EV’s are meant to maximize Breloom’s less bad defense in order to increase his number of chances to set up, such as against gyarados or sp. def jirachi, and to check the mole. 24 speed reaches 182 speed is meant to hopefully outspeed some stuff in that foggy speed tier, as there is a lot of stuff (or least there were the last few generations) hovering around there, usually based on skarmory’s speed. Even with no attack investment, focus punch will usually 2HKO frail-ish pokemon who resist it after switching into SR twice, such as landorus, thundurus, latios, etc. To show how surprisingly bulky it can be, one time breloom managed to survive a +1 Haxorus Outrage (lucky it didn’t have LO) from full health with 12 hp left, spore it, and then leech seed it and recover back up to health and then my opponent ragequit after I got a sub up. I would have lost, too, had it not survived.
@ Leftovers
Storm Drain
252 Hp / 4 Sp. Att / 252 Sp. Def
Calm
-Earth Power
-Surf
-Recover
-Toxic
I will add a description after Gastrodon has been tested.
@ Choice Band
Pressure
40 Hp / 252 Att / 216 Speed
Jolly
-Ice Shard
-Pursuit
-Ice Punch
-Low Kick
Another underrated guy, Weavile is always discarded because it can’t switch into anything besides psychic attacks and HP Ice, and SR stabs it through the chest. Still, he’s the best at what he does which is killing Latios, provided he is weakened a little. When I used breloom obviously I knew that Latios (and others like him – thundurus, latias, etc.) would be annoying because they don’t die in one shot from FP and they outspeed and KO the mushroom fighter. Obviously the best way to get rid of Latios is pursuit, and the first pokemon I thought of were the obvious ones – tyranitar, scizor, even metagross. But these all have in common that they are slow and get raped by rainsurf. So obviously the best solution is to recruit this bounty hunter who is by no means a sweeper but who instead waits in the wings patiently in order to snipe away Latios and Thundurus and perhaps weakened Rotom-W for example as well (many more people will switch out of him than you think, and CB pursuit on a fleeing pokemon does more than you think, usually sealing the deal against neutral threats with 60% or lower left). I never really will switch him in (duh) unless it is crucial and I really think he has a good chance of surviving. Being faster than almost every non-weather threat means that he has the speed of a scarfer and the power of a bander. Often, in easy victories I never will have used him and in tough wins he has played an important part, usually with at least 1 KO. I do not pretend that weavile is an excellent pokemon, but he is a good, solid choice which is basically how this team can be described in general – a collection of pretty good pokemon (with the exception of breloom who is amazing) who work together to produce something more effective than your very generic ttar/mole/gliscor/nattorei/rotom-w/jirachi team which shows up 1 out of every 3 ladder matches.
EV’s give Weavile the ability to outspeed the 120 club (dugtrio, alakazam, sceptile) although to be honest I could probably drop it down to just beat the 115 crew, but after a certain point the Hp isn’t going to do that much and you never know when outspeeding a random UU or RU pokemon is going to mean the difference between a win and a loss. Swellow, of course, is never seen so max speed is inefficient. Ice Shard gives me insurance against all DD’ers and can break Doryuuzu’s balloon for gliscor, while pursuit is also basic. Ice Punch vs. Night Slash is a good debate because while Ice Punch is stronger in general and helps for things like full-health thundurus for example, night slash gives crucial neutral damage against Rotom-W (don’t even mention low kick unless you want to do under 10%) and jirachi. I haven’t tested Night Slash but it could be useful. Low Kick is good for Ttar (can OHKO even while burned) and Nattorei and is in general better than brick break.
Final Look:
This is my humble team. I have never had great success as a teambuilder, but I always want to improve.
The focus of this team is basically to support a very anti-metagame pokemon who, given even just the slightest of openings, can maul through teams very unexpectedly, as people tend to underrate this threat until I even KO their gliscor with it (TBH it has happened only a few times and only low on the ladder but w/e, it makes for a good story). My team is based on the monster that is Subseed Breloom and how it wrecks many teams, weather and non-weather alike. I tried many different teams, always starting with breloom, but none seemed to work. My method is to play a team for 10-20 games, then make an adjustment or two, and to keep on playing. If after 2-3 adjustments the team is still pitiful, I scrap it and move on. Obviously, most of the time top teams tend to take time and many hours of testing in order for the creator to find a formula that works. And while that is true in most cases, this team did pretty well, IMO, and it turned out to be just the first version of a team that I threw together (sort of) on a whim. After peaking at 1309 on the smogon's official server, I fell down in rankings and made adjustments which only made the team worse. So please, I ask of smogon to rate my team and offer suggestions which I will very willingly try, because I am not in love with my team and I want to make it the best it can be. So without further ado, my team:
List of Changes:
-Changed Ice Beam to Stealth Rock on Nidoqueen
-Changed Substitute and Protect to Swords Dance and Ice Fang on Gliscor
-Changed Refresh to Substitute on Latias
-Changed Empoleon to Gastrodon
Sheer Force
252 Hp / 252 Def / 4 Sp. Def
Relaxed
-Toxic Spikes
-Earthquake
-Fire Blast
-Stealth Rock
My first versions of this team were straight-up balanced teams with no real theme and no real concrete method of assisting breloom, so after awhile I decided to try Toxic Spikes support to help defeat counters like Jellicent (not as much of a counter as an annoyance). However, do not make the mistake of thinking that my team is fully dependent on Toxic Spikes, which it is not especially because there are always those times where I run into teams with not a single member vulnerable to TS (Levitators, flyers, poison/steel pokemon, magic guard, and poison heal all do the trick). I picked Nidoqueen as my first TSer and never thought about it again, because of his unexpected utility in the OU tier, as seen in LadyBug’s RMT (though it was Gen 4, there are some similarities to the threats then and now). Good thing that Nidoqueen can still pack a punch with sheer force even if her primary role becomes moot, because she can still counter various threats like scizor, and she can threaten things like gliscor (EQ doesn’t 2HKO), forretress, skarmory, and nattorei. Nidoqueen is my lead most of the time unless there is something unpleasant in the lead position like politoed, ninetails, or thundurus. She does a pretty good job of checking tyranitar, even though it takes a chunk from ice beam, because EQ is a solid 3HKO and she will outspeed the common sassy tyranitars.
For the EV’s, max HP and Def is obvious, because Nidoqueen is meant to be a stop to a lot of physical threats (although unfortunately this generation earthquake has had resurgence and as such it doesn’t do as well against the primary physical threats). I’ve thought about adding some EV’s to Special attack to give it a little more bite, but I’m not sure exactly how many. The moves are pretty self-explanatory, Earthquake is so things like Sp. Def Tyranitar and Jirachi don’t have an easier time, and I relegated SR to something else so that Nidoqueen would not be as much of a sitting duck, with three powerful attacks.
Poison Heal
252 Hp / 176 Def / 80 Speed
Impish
-Swords Dance
-Ice Fang
-Earthquake
-Taunt
When I first saw this thing on the analysis, I thought it would be a godsend, but truthfully it has been surprisingly not very useful. At first it looked like another Doryuuzu check, and the more you have of those the better, and it also looked like another TS staller. However, it all looks good on paper until you realize that you aren’t playing a CPU like in the battle tower, and (most of the time) your opponent isn’t a functional idiot. Thus, their Rotom-W won’t idiotically burn all its Hydro Pump PP as so ideally described by the analysis, and usually they will switch to something that easily scares gliscor away, like lati@s or landorus or thundurus or, well, anything that flies. I am exceedingly paranoid of moles on crack, and so I am reluctant to switch gliscor for something else, but honestly gliscor isn’t that helpful, and it’s embarrassing when I have to sacrifice something just so gliscor can hit balloon doryuuzu. The number of times that I’ve had to resort to petty PP stall is very depressing for this set, especially since it doesn’t have Pressure. All suggestions are welcome.
EV’s are standard but with 8 more in speed to taunt opposing gliscor before they taunt me, and to beat those who put enough in to beat 72 speed gliscor by 1 point. The moveset is self-explanatory, with Taunt in the final spot because of the general redundancy of running toxic (especially with a sleeper on the team).
Levitate
252 Hp / 4 Sp. Att / 252 Speed
Timid
-Calm Mind
-Dragon Pulse
-Recover
-Substitute
I’ve always been a fan of Latias for previous generations, and so far in gen 5 he’s been pretty useful. Latias is a big stop to opposing Rotom-W and most Gliscor, and he checks/counters other pokemon such as Heatran and opposing Lati@s, with a perfect speed IV. I tried a similar set before but with HP fire over refresh, and while it worked decently well, it still couldn’t defeat tyranitar, the main threat, and it always lost the speed tie against opposing Lati@s. However, in testing Refresh isn’t as good as it sounds on paper. Why? Because Paralysis is usually spread by Jirachi, who, like the annoying ***** it is, will proceed to iron head it to death before I can refresh. Sleep obviously renders it useless, and I’ve realized that in the much more offensive gen 5, there are next to no sweepers who can run through a majority of teams, like in previous generations, just because of status immunity. Basically, no team relies on status as their only counter to bulky sweepers, and instead they tend to power through regardless of toxic or not. This is why the legendary Crocune also is met with less success today – Quick set-up sweepers is the name of the game in B/W, as seen by Garchomp’s, Landorus’, Doryuuzu’s, Thundurus’, and Terakion’s success in the tier. Overall this Latias set hasn’t been as effective as last generation so I might switch it to a Latios, possibly with Blue Star’s set.
EV’s are basic for all fast CM’ers because 252 Hp is efficient for optimizing defenses and max speed is important for Latias’ crucial speed tier. The last point goes into Sp. Att to pack a tad more punch while setting up. The first three moves are standard, while Refresh is, ideally, meant to provide extra set-up opportunities, but often the opponent isn’t stupid and will switch to tyranitar or scizor or doryuuzu. Or they’ll rage quit. But not often.
Poison Heal
252 Hp / 232 Def / 24 Speed
Impish
-Spore
-Substitute
-Leech Seed
-Focus Punch
[Insert cliché about Breloom being the star of the show, etc.] Yeah, so this guy’s good. Real good. Anyway, he’s basically solved my nattorei problems and can wall most Rotom-W, except those LO or Specs ones in the rain. I admit I haven’t tried an offensive set but seedstalling is so much more effective than hitting a few threats with seed bomb or stone edge because it allows Breloom to maul anything slower than it and it lets him stick around much longer (a good thing, at least for me). Unfortunately, despite Breloom being an awesome pokemon I occasionally play too carelessly with him and he dies to an attack I think he can survive, or he gets paralyzed by nattorei’s t-wave. Oftentimes my opponent doesn’t have a single good counter to him and he’s forced to sacrifice a pokemon to bring out latios or something with breloom’s sub down, in which case I can get rid of latios with my foolproof method and then continue wreaking havoc. I usually will play cautiously with spore, not wasting it the first opportunity I get, because a lot of the time against a good opponent spore is a one-time weapon: No good opponent will sit there and wait for their pokemon to wake up, and they can’t play smart and burn away a few turns by clever switching because of B/W’s new sleep rules. Thus I wait to sleep the most annoying guy I can, although unfortunately a lot of the time that guy is gliscor, who can’t be slept. Another reason I don’t want to use tyranitar is because his sandstorm messes with breloom’s ability to heal naturally (or unnaturally, depending on how you view toxic healing) and halves his recovery per turn. With leech seed up, often I won’t lose a point of hp, or a very small amount, when I make a sub so I can stall out enemies like jirachi or scizor. On an earlier version of this team, I used paralysis support instead, and though it gave me even less opportunities to spore (more guys get paralyzed than poisoned), it was arguably more useful because with a speed advantage, breloom is so much more effective plus he can occasionally get a free sub. So in conclusion this guy is a major underrated threat, try him out and with proper team support and a couple opportunities to switch in he will eat a team alive.
EV’s are meant to maximize Breloom’s less bad defense in order to increase his number of chances to set up, such as against gyarados or sp. def jirachi, and to check the mole. 24 speed reaches 182 speed is meant to hopefully outspeed some stuff in that foggy speed tier, as there is a lot of stuff (or least there were the last few generations) hovering around there, usually based on skarmory’s speed. Even with no attack investment, focus punch will usually 2HKO frail-ish pokemon who resist it after switching into SR twice, such as landorus, thundurus, latios, etc. To show how surprisingly bulky it can be, one time breloom managed to survive a +1 Haxorus Outrage (lucky it didn’t have LO) from full health with 12 hp left, spore it, and then leech seed it and recover back up to health and then my opponent ragequit after I got a sub up. I would have lost, too, had it not survived.
Storm Drain
252 Hp / 4 Sp. Att / 252 Sp. Def
Calm
-Earth Power
-Surf
-Recover
-Toxic
I will add a description after Gastrodon has been tested.
Pressure
40 Hp / 252 Att / 216 Speed
Jolly
-Ice Shard
-Pursuit
-Ice Punch
-Low Kick
Another underrated guy, Weavile is always discarded because it can’t switch into anything besides psychic attacks and HP Ice, and SR stabs it through the chest. Still, he’s the best at what he does which is killing Latios, provided he is weakened a little. When I used breloom obviously I knew that Latios (and others like him – thundurus, latias, etc.) would be annoying because they don’t die in one shot from FP and they outspeed and KO the mushroom fighter. Obviously the best way to get rid of Latios is pursuit, and the first pokemon I thought of were the obvious ones – tyranitar, scizor, even metagross. But these all have in common that they are slow and get raped by rainsurf. So obviously the best solution is to recruit this bounty hunter who is by no means a sweeper but who instead waits in the wings patiently in order to snipe away Latios and Thundurus and perhaps weakened Rotom-W for example as well (many more people will switch out of him than you think, and CB pursuit on a fleeing pokemon does more than you think, usually sealing the deal against neutral threats with 60% or lower left). I never really will switch him in (duh) unless it is crucial and I really think he has a good chance of surviving. Being faster than almost every non-weather threat means that he has the speed of a scarfer and the power of a bander. Often, in easy victories I never will have used him and in tough wins he has played an important part, usually with at least 1 KO. I do not pretend that weavile is an excellent pokemon, but he is a good, solid choice which is basically how this team can be described in general – a collection of pretty good pokemon (with the exception of breloom who is amazing) who work together to produce something more effective than your very generic ttar/mole/gliscor/nattorei/rotom-w/jirachi team which shows up 1 out of every 3 ladder matches.
EV’s give Weavile the ability to outspeed the 120 club (dugtrio, alakazam, sceptile) although to be honest I could probably drop it down to just beat the 115 crew, but after a certain point the Hp isn’t going to do that much and you never know when outspeeding a random UU or RU pokemon is going to mean the difference between a win and a loss. Swellow, of course, is never seen so max speed is inefficient. Ice Shard gives me insurance against all DD’ers and can break Doryuuzu’s balloon for gliscor, while pursuit is also basic. Ice Punch vs. Night Slash is a good debate because while Ice Punch is stronger in general and helps for things like full-health thundurus for example, night slash gives crucial neutral damage against Rotom-W (don’t even mention low kick unless you want to do under 10%) and jirachi. I haven’t tested Night Slash but it could be useful. Low Kick is good for Ttar (can OHKO even while burned) and Nattorei and is in general better than brick break.
Final Look:
This is my humble team. I have never had great success as a teambuilder, but I always want to improve.
