Welcome to my new rmt and this time I have decided to basis a team in regards to team type ie. Ho, sun, stall ect., rather than a specific mon than I have done in the past (suicune "the north wind"), as such i ahve chosen to build the team around rain. Although ludiolo was my inspiration for building a rain team in the first place, as the team was built, he was abruptly removed. Unlike in the past I have no qualms or nitpicks about certain pokemon being removed, as mentioned before, this team has no basis on individual pokemon unlike in many of my rmts. so lets get started on the team building process!
First up it's politoed. Although rain received a significant nerf this gen (introducing a life span to all auto weather conditions in a similar fashion to the weather inducing move mechanics), politoed still finds himself an invaluable asset to all rain teams for his ability to set up rain for 5-8 turns, by merely switching in. Thus politoed finds himself an automatic place on the team.
I mentioned before, that ludicolo was my main inspiration for making a rain team and naturally he finds a place on this team, for now. Unlike in gen 5, swift swim is no longer illegal with drizzle on the same team, so naturally I was looking to abuse this fact with powerful swift swimmers. Kingdra, ludicolo and kabutops are the most viable swift swimmers in ou and all were taken into consideration. In the end it was a question of typing, kabutops is weak to: electric, ground, grass (4x) and fighting, 2 of which he shares with politoed and in the long run, I wnated to wiat and see how the team panned out before i planned on replacing kingdra or ludicolo possibly for him. Kingdra being's excellent water/dragon typing to the table, both offensively and defensively and can easily abuse stab boosted water moves and swift swim, without bringing any crippling weaknesses to the team. Ludicolo is in a similar boat to kingdra, but his grass typing allows to deal with significant threats to the team, namely bulky waters, such as rotom-w and still produce excellent defensive and offensive presence in the rain.
At this stage I was hoping to introduce a choice scarf user, something to set up SR and some sort of general fail safe and cleaner, to clean up the mess behind by kingdra and ludiocolo. Deoyxs-S was the first mon that came to mind. His insane speed, effectively makes him the equivalent of a base 102 roughly speed choice scarf user, with the added freedom of choosing his own moves. His 95 offenses are not great, but his ability to use life orb and maintain his speed, his lack of reliance on the rain for offensive pressure and his excellent move pool, make him a very potent revenge killer/ late game cleaner, that this team needs. He also presented a way of checking mega venasaur.
Okay looking at the team now, one pokemon that was concerning me, was thunderous-i. Sure kingdra and ludicolo could easily deal with the rather fragile sweeper in the rain and deoyxs too, but priority thunder wave could cripple both sweepers and deoyxs for the rest of the match and i have no safe switch in, to stop it. Raikou is currently the best answer to thunderous and as a bonus raikou can check/counter a wide variety of threats such as priority flying type users, bulky waters ect.
My mega slow was free and i was looking for quite a few thing's on one mon, I wanted a sturdy steel type to tank hits, i wanted a physically biased defensive tank as my team is rather frail physically and is primarily made up of special attackers, i wnated a way of dealing with the lati twins as kingdra was unreliable at best at dispatching them and finally i wanted a defog user. Scizor ticked all these boxes, more specifically his mega form, to which I had no other mega to complete for the slot and who's stats, typing and move pool were perfectly suited to the role I needed it for.
okay the team was shaping up and a few thing's were concerning me -special walls such as chansey, were going to be hard fro the team to punch holes through, due to my lack of physical attackers and ferrothorn was going to be a problem. Keldeo came to mind as being able to destroy special walls, abuse the rain and function outside the rain just as effectively. I had raikou to deal with bulky waters and kingdra felt more useful to the team than ludicolo and did not add any more significant extra weaknesses replacing him with keldeo as replacing ludicolo with kedelo.
Keldeo was not working out as i hoped, keldeo's weakness to the flying and fairy types weer generally anoying for the team and generally I felt his replacement azumaril was more of a team player than keldeo for the team and was able to bring much of what keldeo to the table, but have greater synergy with the team, due to his fairy typing.
Damp Rock
calm
252 Hp / 252 SpDef / 4 Def
-Rest
-Rest Talk
-Scald
-Toxic
Politoed can no longer set up rain with impunity as he did before, old and new weather inducing threats are ou there and simply ridding your team of them is not going to result in infinite rain fro the rest of the match. So focusing on survivability of politoed is key. Rest no longer resets it's counter after switching and thus rest talk has become a much more viable strategy and politoed also has no other reliable way of recovery, in addition to formfitting leftovers for more turns of rain with damp rock, making it an ideal choice for politoed. Scald and toxic allows politoed to potentially cripple an opponent and punish them for trying to kill or set up on the little guy. The ev's allow politoed to make good use of his special bulk and prevent him from otherwise dying from se effective attacks, which will hit him on the special side generally, while scald threatens to cripple physical attackers.
choice band
Adamant
228 Hp / 252 Atk / 28 Spe
-Aqua Jet
-Rough Play
-Super power
-Waterfall
Azumaril has been getting better and better each generation since it's introduction. In 2nd gen it got huge power, in 4th gen it got stab it could abuse it's massive power with, 5th gen it could abuse aqua jet in the rain and finnaly in 6th gen it got a fantastic new typing, water/fairy. Now the Aqua rabbit seeks to cause havoc once more. Azumaril finds it's self on the team as the preferred, physically attacking rain abuser. It's water stab priority aqua jet is boosted by not only the rain but massive natural attack boosted by choice band, it's regular stab waterfall hits no longer like a truck but a train to anything that does not have the resistances and defense to stop it, rough play hits a varity of threats super effective and hard and finally super power allows azumaril to wipe out threats such as ferrothorn to the team. Azumaril has been chosen over keldeo, ludicolo and kabutops because it shares many of the traits of 3 but takes the best of them the team needs, namely it's stellar typing, ability to work outside the rian, natural power and access to powerful priority in the rain.
life orb
rash
64 Atk / 252 SpA / 192 Spe
-Outrage
-Watrfall
-Hydro Pump
-Draco meteor
Mixed rain sweeping kingdra, the set allows kingdra to abuse the rain to it's finest. Both it's stab moves are very potent offensively, unfortunately they are walled hard by azumaril and ferrothorn, both of which can hit kingdra back with se effective stab, regardless kingdras movepool is so barren, that his stabs and hidden power are his only viable offensive options. With this in mind mixed kingdra allows to take full advantage of his stab moves by hitting threats from both end sof the spectrum, while maintaining the speed, granated by rain and taking advatange of threats that all resist one of his stabs and hitting them in their lower defence for neutral or super effective damge such as the lati, drgaonite or goodra. either way he will need other teamates to alleviate his hard counters he has no chance of removing himself. Outrage is on the set to help deal with specially baised dragons and provide neutal physical coverage with waterfall, and rain dance is less prefered as kingdra is the only team members, totally reliant on rain to function it's self.
Life orb
naive
20 Atk / 252 SpA / 236 Spe
-Psycho boost
-Ice beam
-Stealth Rock
-Super power
Deoyxs-s efefctively acts as the team choice scarf user. a revnger killer as well as a late game cleaner, if rain is gone and kingdra and pals are either koed or too weak to carry on, deoyxs comes into clean up the mess. This psycho killer set allows him ot pcik off, threaten and revenge kill threats with minimal fuss, in addition to setting up sr on the team, while forcing thing's out. The set is simple and so it's purpose, clean up the mess after the party is over and stop thing's from going out of hand(revenge), as well as sleeping it running (allowing a chance for politoed to set up rain again.
choice specs
timid
32 HP / 252 SpA / 224 Spe
-Thunder
-Volt Switch
-hidden power ice
-Extrasensory
I needed a way of dealing with thunderous-i, raikou was this way. He walls thunderous hard, outspeeds and hits back hard too. Many of my team can deal with thunderous int he rain but are crippled by thunderwave, which a dying thunderous is likely to spam if it's not going to switch out for another day. rai's electric typing, makes him immune to thunderwave and resist thudnerous's stab moves to boot, allowing him to siwtch in with relative impunity. The choice of whether to go specs or Av with raikou was hard for me, while av hard counters thunderous, it's not particularly useful outside of that role. chocie specs ont he other hand still deals with thunderous-i must must be played much more carefully, but does punish the enmy by hittign like a truck with it's stab and coverage moves, another advanateg to specs is raikou become s harder to wall, by issue pokemon such as av conk or mega venasaur, which have granted it a place on the team on the basis that egneral practicality was more valued than hard countering thudnerous.
Impish
252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
-Bullet Punch
-U-turn
-Defog
-Roost
Mega scizor is in many ways the glue of the team. He personally does not gain much from the rain, other than the loss of the crippling 4x weakness to fire at the cost of being more vurenable to water baised attack to which half the team is resistant to anyways. His steel typign and sheer bulk allows him to often switch into threats with impunity, such as lati@s and dela with them accordingly. U-turn and his reltively low speed allows him to take an attack, hit back with u-turn and allow the momentum of the team continue and with raikou can form a volturn combo is need be. Ace's to defog allows him to prevent the team from being worn down by hazards, especially since all members of the team are vulnerable to spikes and switching will often occur to generate rain again or simply to allow another member to deal with threats if sheer force does not allow. Access to roost is the cherry on the top as it allows scizor to deal with taking blows for the team with greater impunity and lack of leftovers, to which his typing and defenses seeminly flawlessly allow.
First up it's politoed. Although rain received a significant nerf this gen (introducing a life span to all auto weather conditions in a similar fashion to the weather inducing move mechanics), politoed still finds himself an invaluable asset to all rain teams for his ability to set up rain for 5-8 turns, by merely switching in. Thus politoed finds himself an automatic place on the team.
I mentioned before, that ludicolo was my main inspiration for making a rain team and naturally he finds a place on this team, for now. Unlike in gen 5, swift swim is no longer illegal with drizzle on the same team, so naturally I was looking to abuse this fact with powerful swift swimmers. Kingdra, ludicolo and kabutops are the most viable swift swimmers in ou and all were taken into consideration. In the end it was a question of typing, kabutops is weak to: electric, ground, grass (4x) and fighting, 2 of which he shares with politoed and in the long run, I wnated to wiat and see how the team panned out before i planned on replacing kingdra or ludicolo possibly for him. Kingdra being's excellent water/dragon typing to the table, both offensively and defensively and can easily abuse stab boosted water moves and swift swim, without bringing any crippling weaknesses to the team. Ludicolo is in a similar boat to kingdra, but his grass typing allows to deal with significant threats to the team, namely bulky waters, such as rotom-w and still produce excellent defensive and offensive presence in the rain.
At this stage I was hoping to introduce a choice scarf user, something to set up SR and some sort of general fail safe and cleaner, to clean up the mess behind by kingdra and ludiocolo. Deoyxs-S was the first mon that came to mind. His insane speed, effectively makes him the equivalent of a base 102 roughly speed choice scarf user, with the added freedom of choosing his own moves. His 95 offenses are not great, but his ability to use life orb and maintain his speed, his lack of reliance on the rain for offensive pressure and his excellent move pool, make him a very potent revenge killer/ late game cleaner, that this team needs. He also presented a way of checking mega venasaur.
Okay looking at the team now, one pokemon that was concerning me, was thunderous-i. Sure kingdra and ludicolo could easily deal with the rather fragile sweeper in the rain and deoyxs too, but priority thunder wave could cripple both sweepers and deoyxs for the rest of the match and i have no safe switch in, to stop it. Raikou is currently the best answer to thunderous and as a bonus raikou can check/counter a wide variety of threats such as priority flying type users, bulky waters ect.
My mega slow was free and i was looking for quite a few thing's on one mon, I wanted a sturdy steel type to tank hits, i wanted a physically biased defensive tank as my team is rather frail physically and is primarily made up of special attackers, i wnated a way of dealing with the lati twins as kingdra was unreliable at best at dispatching them and finally i wanted a defog user. Scizor ticked all these boxes, more specifically his mega form, to which I had no other mega to complete for the slot and who's stats, typing and move pool were perfectly suited to the role I needed it for.
okay the team was shaping up and a few thing's were concerning me -special walls such as chansey, were going to be hard fro the team to punch holes through, due to my lack of physical attackers and ferrothorn was going to be a problem. Keldeo came to mind as being able to destroy special walls, abuse the rain and function outside the rain just as effectively. I had raikou to deal with bulky waters and kingdra felt more useful to the team than ludicolo and did not add any more significant extra weaknesses replacing him with keldeo as replacing ludicolo with kedelo.
Keldeo was not working out as i hoped, keldeo's weakness to the flying and fairy types weer generally anoying for the team and generally I felt his replacement azumaril was more of a team player than keldeo for the team and was able to bring much of what keldeo to the table, but have greater synergy with the team, due to his fairy typing.
calm
252 Hp / 252 SpDef / 4 Def
-Rest
-Rest Talk
-Scald
-Toxic
Politoed can no longer set up rain with impunity as he did before, old and new weather inducing threats are ou there and simply ridding your team of them is not going to result in infinite rain fro the rest of the match. So focusing on survivability of politoed is key. Rest no longer resets it's counter after switching and thus rest talk has become a much more viable strategy and politoed also has no other reliable way of recovery, in addition to formfitting leftovers for more turns of rain with damp rock, making it an ideal choice for politoed. Scald and toxic allows politoed to potentially cripple an opponent and punish them for trying to kill or set up on the little guy. The ev's allow politoed to make good use of his special bulk and prevent him from otherwise dying from se effective attacks, which will hit him on the special side generally, while scald threatens to cripple physical attackers.
Adamant
228 Hp / 252 Atk / 28 Spe
-Aqua Jet
-Rough Play
-Super power
-Waterfall
Azumaril has been getting better and better each generation since it's introduction. In 2nd gen it got huge power, in 4th gen it got stab it could abuse it's massive power with, 5th gen it could abuse aqua jet in the rain and finnaly in 6th gen it got a fantastic new typing, water/fairy. Now the Aqua rabbit seeks to cause havoc once more. Azumaril finds it's self on the team as the preferred, physically attacking rain abuser. It's water stab priority aqua jet is boosted by not only the rain but massive natural attack boosted by choice band, it's regular stab waterfall hits no longer like a truck but a train to anything that does not have the resistances and defense to stop it, rough play hits a varity of threats super effective and hard and finally super power allows azumaril to wipe out threats such as ferrothorn to the team. Azumaril has been chosen over keldeo, ludicolo and kabutops because it shares many of the traits of 3 but takes the best of them the team needs, namely it's stellar typing, ability to work outside the rian, natural power and access to powerful priority in the rain.
rash
64 Atk / 252 SpA / 192 Spe
-Outrage
-Watrfall
-Hydro Pump
-Draco meteor
Mixed rain sweeping kingdra, the set allows kingdra to abuse the rain to it's finest. Both it's stab moves are very potent offensively, unfortunately they are walled hard by azumaril and ferrothorn, both of which can hit kingdra back with se effective stab, regardless kingdras movepool is so barren, that his stabs and hidden power are his only viable offensive options. With this in mind mixed kingdra allows to take full advantage of his stab moves by hitting threats from both end sof the spectrum, while maintaining the speed, granated by rain and taking advatange of threats that all resist one of his stabs and hitting them in their lower defence for neutral or super effective damge such as the lati, drgaonite or goodra. either way he will need other teamates to alleviate his hard counters he has no chance of removing himself. Outrage is on the set to help deal with specially baised dragons and provide neutal physical coverage with waterfall, and rain dance is less prefered as kingdra is the only team members, totally reliant on rain to function it's self.
naive
20 Atk / 252 SpA / 236 Spe
-Psycho boost
-Ice beam
-Stealth Rock
-Super power
Deoyxs-s efefctively acts as the team choice scarf user. a revnger killer as well as a late game cleaner, if rain is gone and kingdra and pals are either koed or too weak to carry on, deoyxs comes into clean up the mess. This psycho killer set allows him ot pcik off, threaten and revenge kill threats with minimal fuss, in addition to setting up sr on the team, while forcing thing's out. The set is simple and so it's purpose, clean up the mess after the party is over and stop thing's from going out of hand(revenge), as well as sleeping it running (allowing a chance for politoed to set up rain again.
timid
32 HP / 252 SpA / 224 Spe
-Thunder
-Volt Switch
-hidden power ice
-Extrasensory
I needed a way of dealing with thunderous-i, raikou was this way. He walls thunderous hard, outspeeds and hits back hard too. Many of my team can deal with thunderous int he rain but are crippled by thunderwave, which a dying thunderous is likely to spam if it's not going to switch out for another day. rai's electric typing, makes him immune to thunderwave and resist thudnerous's stab moves to boot, allowing him to siwtch in with relative impunity. The choice of whether to go specs or Av with raikou was hard for me, while av hard counters thunderous, it's not particularly useful outside of that role. chocie specs ont he other hand still deals with thunderous-i must must be played much more carefully, but does punish the enmy by hittign like a truck with it's stab and coverage moves, another advanateg to specs is raikou become s harder to wall, by issue pokemon such as av conk or mega venasaur, which have granted it a place on the team on the basis that egneral practicality was more valued than hard countering thudnerous.
Impish
252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
-Bullet Punch
-U-turn
-Defog
-Roost
Mega scizor is in many ways the glue of the team. He personally does not gain much from the rain, other than the loss of the crippling 4x weakness to fire at the cost of being more vurenable to water baised attack to which half the team is resistant to anyways. His steel typign and sheer bulk allows him to often switch into threats with impunity, such as lati@s and dela with them accordingly. U-turn and his reltively low speed allows him to take an attack, hit back with u-turn and allow the momentum of the team continue and with raikou can form a volturn combo is need be. Ace's to defog allows him to prevent the team from being worn down by hazards, especially since all members of the team are vulnerable to spikes and switching will often occur to generate rain again or simply to allow another member to deal with threats if sheer force does not allow. Access to roost is the cherry on the top as it allows scizor to deal with taking blows for the team with greater impunity and lack of leftovers, to which his typing and defenses seeminly flawlessly allow.
