Sandstorm/Trick Room Team

[aliencereal]

As I've only gotten into competitive battling since X/Y, this is my first real team-- I've raised it in-game, and I've had a lot of success with it. I thought I'd run it by you guys for some expert advice!

Tyranitar / Male (Smooth Rock)
Ability: Sand Stream
252 Atk / 84 Def / 84 SDef / 88 HP
Brave Nature
--Protect
--Crunch
--Rock Slide
--Power-Up Punch

My weather inducer and one of the two set-up pokemon for the team! Power-Up Punch is the move I'm iffiest about on this one, because it doesn't do enough damage to get out of a tight spot, but it's a helpful boost to sweeps when he can pull them off. Rock Slide is the move I use the most, as it has both STAB and spread.

Reuniclus / Female (Focus Sash)
Ability: Magic Guard
252 SpAtk / 84 Def / 84 SDef / 88 HP
Mild Nature
--Protect
--Trick Room
--Psychic
--Focus Blast

The slowest pokemon on the team and also the trick room setter. I used to have a life orb on her as she can usually take a hit and it's an item easily abused by a pokemon with magic guard, but I was running into her getting KO'd before setting up trick room too often and switched to the focus sash. Similarly, I used to have her running recover instead of protect, but I found myself rarely willing to give up a turn of attacking to heal, and protect keeps her out of harm's way when there's a ghost or dark pokemon on the field, while her partner cleans up.

Garchomp / Male (Yache Berry)
Ability: Sand Veil
252 Atk / 84 Def / 84 SDef / 88 HP
Careful Nature
--Crunch
--Earthquake
--Rock Slide
--Dual Chop

At first, I'd considered Garchomp too speedy for this team. However, this turned out to be an advantage rather than a cost on a number of occasions, where trick room had time to wear off and I'd already lost MY Reuniclus, leaving me with a team of pokemon that always went last. Garchomp's higher speed and boosts from the sandstorm leave him a functional backup that's helped the team, and packs more than enough of a punch to hit hard even when going last.

Empoleon / Male (Weakness Policy)
Ability: Torrent
252 SAtk / 252 HP / 4 Def
Quirky Nature
--Flash Cannon
--Grass Knot
--Protect
--Scald

Although not last on this list, Empoleon was the last added to the team, in hopes of giving the team a bit more of a type spread. The team had too much of a fairy weakness, and so a steel type seemed ideal to patch up that hole. Scald's burn chance is also welcome on the team, as it has very little status-inducing ability. Grass Knot finishes up the set, to handle water types which threaten half the team. Weakness policy was chosen after some deliberation, as Empoleon is fairly bulky and lacks 4x weaknesses that would make the item useless.

Clefable / Female (Life Orb)
Ability: Magic Guard
130 SAtk / 126 Def / 126 SDef / 126 HP
Quiet Nature
--Ice Beam
--Protect
--Moonblast
--Flamethrower

While I'd given up the Magic Guard/Life Orb combination on my Reuniclus, I still really liked it and thus looked for another pokemon that could potentially use it. Clefable turned out to be this pokemon, and also benefits from pure fairy typing, leaving it with only two weaknesses that are not common to the rest of the team. Magic Guard also protects it from sandstorm damage, just like my Reuniclus, and Clefable is also slow enough to work in trick room.

Gliscor / Female (Toxic Orb)
Ability: Poison Heal
252 HP / 200 SDef / 56 Atk
Careful Nature
--Poison Jab
--Earthquake
--Rock Slide
--Protect

An immunity to Garchomp's earthquake, reliable healing, mid-level speed that works both in and out of trick room and only one notable weakness apart from the frightening 4x weakness to ice, Gliscor seemed an ideal member of this team. She is, however, the one member I'm truly iffy about, as her role is similar to that of Garchomp, with the exact same crippling weakness and less attack strength. I haven't found anything I'd like to replace her with, though, and she's proved plenty useful in battle.

ISSUES

Ice weakness; Two pokemon with a 4x weakness to ice is unappealing, especially if the opponent can get rid of Tyranitar and then get hail up.

Limited movesets; I feel like a greater variety of move options or types would benefit the team, but I'm not exactly sure how or what moves would be preferable.

I'm sure there are other problems, and I'm especially worried about Gliscor and Garchomp, but I've hit a wall and I'm not sure what else to tweak to make the team flow better. Overall, I've had success with the team how it is, but I feel it could use some fine tuning. Criticism and help is super appreciated! Thanks!

 

[MangaMan]

One problem I'm seeing is that you only have one trick roomer. Once your Reuniclus goes down, there is nobody to set up trick room any more. Since your running sandstorm I would suggest Claydol as another trick roomer to add to your team. Grumpig would be another interesting choice for a trick roomer, as he has thick fat which can help with your ice weakness.

 

[aliencereal]

MangaMan Would Safety Goggles be a good item for a Grumpig on this team, or would it be preferable to just deal with the sand damage and give it something else?

 

[MangaMan]

Not sure. Definitely try it. I would probably go with leftovers, because Grumpig is going to need to stay alive as long as possible. I haven't used one myself, so I don't know how bulky he can be. But that Special defense is nothing to laugh about. Plus, Grumpig isn't going to out on the field for too long, just long enough to set up trick room and maybe land a hit or two and leftovers will recover off any sand damage.

 

[TheAwesomeDude]

Sup. Not much advice here but change Garchomp's item to Garchompnite as your team lacks a Mega. Mega-Garchomp's ability, sand rush, may feud with trick room but it still makes an excellent late game sweeper.

 

[BlarFace0101]

Hello c: glad to see someone else looking into using trick room in x and y. First off, I notice that 5/6 of your pokes pack protect which seems kinda redundant when you only have five turns to wreak havoc while you're in trick room.

Instead of protect on reuniclus you should use shadow ball because it gives you amazing coverage with psychic/focus blast/shadow ball. To best utilize the monstrous capabilities that reuniclus has under trick room I'd suggest using a set similar to this:

Reuniclus Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Quiet Nature(+SpAtk -Spe)
252 SpAtk/184 Hp/72 Def
-Psychic
-Focus Blast
-Shadow Ball
-Trick Room

I also notice that your team doesn't have any entry hazards so, since you're a bit iffy about the Gliscor and it has very little business being on a trick room team anyway, you could swap it out for a lead Bronzong. It can lighten your ice weakness, provide hazards and set up trick room. I've used this set in the past and it has worked well;

Bronzong @Macho Brace
Ability: Levitate
Relaxed Nature (+Def -Spe)
-Stealth Rock
-Earthquake
-Gyro Ball
-Trick Room

The play style behind this set is fairly simple, lead with bronzong, set up hazards, if threatened and not resisted: gyro ball or eq the crap out of your opponent, set up trick room, switch into the appropriate sweeper, profit. However, you could always just add sr over protect on Ttar(lol)

About Ttar though, you'd be better off running fire blast instead of power-up punch. Your ev spreads for most of your pokes are a bit odd. For Tyranitar there are many options but for your team, I'd suggest a physically defensive Ttar since it would even out your specially defensive vs physically defensive pokes. The set could look a little like this:

Tyranitar @Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
Relaxed Nature (+Def -Spe)
252 Def/192 Hp/64 Atk
-Fire Blast
-Crunch
-Stone Edge/Superpower/Rock Slide
-Earthquake/Stealth Rock

Instead of protect on your Clefable, you could use Wish and change up the ev spread a bit so it can pass large wishes to your teammates. As for Empoleon you could run a few different things in place of protect such as ice beam, knock off (which is surprisingly useful this gen), aqua ring for some recovery, or even defog if you wanted to.
That's about all I've got, hope it helped and good luck with the team :D
Edit: Oops, forgot ev spread on Bronzong. Try something along the lines of this:
244 Hp/ 180 Atk/ 84 SpDef

 

[Atamaz]

I used to play Trick Room in the bw gen and it was interesting and different because most of the HO team rely heavily on huge speed and TR turn it against them, but I feel that is even harder in the current meta because most of the team are composed by bulky pokemon who can tank your hit untill TR expire or "wall-breaking"-type of pokemon who kill you with some stat boost+priority move(which ignore trick room and act first).
Another important issue is that, even in a weather team, you cannot have too many pokemon with similar type unless you are sure you can handle your common weakness, so you need to try to have different type of pokemon, expecially now that weather have limited duration.
Last generic weak spot I see is that if you really want to use TR you need more than 1 inducer.

My advice is to think a split strategy, TR may be a decent late game strategy but I think that in the current meta you need to be more straightforward: you resove menace/weaken opponent team ->setup TR -> sweep to win.
For the early game there are some viable strategy, use sandstorm + entry hazard + status(remember that paralysis halves speed that's risky under TR, while burn halves attack to help your sweeper survive better later against physical pokemon) + bulky pokemon to weaken the opponent team to a point where you can sweep them easy; or you can plan a sandstorm + volturn strategy + SR with the same purpose but in a little more aggressive way, or you can use some kind of aggressive approach trying to lure and eliminate counters of your sweeper and priority user from the board.

As sweeper I used Reniclus and Conkeldurr which with the current AV set I think is even stronger, but aside from that I haven't really tested TR in XY so I don't really know, if you don't use you mega slot on TTar Mega-Mawile may be an interesting option, without megastone involved probably Azumarill in both BD or CB set and Aegislash there are for sure other that simply I don't remember but with the limited duration of sandstorm open some door so you don't have to be afraid of hurt yourself with residual damage.

About the megastone Mega TTar is really mega and it continue to spread sand around the world and that's good, Mega-Garchomp is also pretty nasty with his EQ at 130 power within the sand but I think you need to cut one between Gchomp and Gliscor, so if you're not planning on using the megastone on Gchomp is better cut him because Gliscor at least give you earth immunity which is pretty nice with all the steel and rock on you team, or cut them both and use a defensive pivot lando-T:

Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 172 Def / 88 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- U-turn
- Stealth Rock

Mega-Mawile is also good, well to say the truth most of the megas are very good so pick one.

For TR setter I didn't still check the updated list but I've see that the 2 ghosts-grass mon both can settle it(grass even give some earth resistance), last gen I used Reuniclus, Slowbro, Porygon and Xatu as possibility but pretty much all psychic and ghost mon can set TR; Fast TR setter are not bad because you can set and switch them out, you don't really want to waste turn inside TR and imo recover is still better than protect because can hel you from status and spike damage, if you want to keep a mono-setter you can try to use regenerator mon like slowbro that also have a nice bulky and move coverage, or try a regenerator Reuniclus lol.

 

[NotBruceWayne]

I agree with TheAwesomeDude about changing your Garchomp's item to Garchompite. MegaChomp works really well under the sand and you can use him in two different ways. One would is being that failsafe outside of TR. Something that looks like this:

Garchomp @ Garchompite
Ability: Rough Skin / Sand Veil
EVs: 224 Atk / 32 SpA / 252 Spd
Naughty / Hasty Nature
- Draco Meteor / Dragon Claw
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide

Or you can use him under TR by changing the EVs to 252 HP instead of Speed and setting Speed IVs to 0. I'm not to sure about this one as Garchomp is probably too fast for TR even with a -Speed nature. Mega Chomp is a different story though.

On the topic of an additional TR setter, I do think that BlarFace0101 suggested on of the best TR setters in Bronzong. You can also swap EQ for Explosion to get a free switch into something but EQ is a fine option as well.
Good luck with your team!!