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Standared Tankchomp, not much to say here, I use it to stop enemy dragons when Thundurus is down as Clefable takes a few turns to setup allowing the opponent to switch and knock Clefable out.
My spare dragon counter and T-Waver, mainly used against anything i don't have specific counters agains't (Keldeo) also counters Azumarill and Slowbro when Serperior is down / can't be used (trapped Thundurus / poison / burn)
Just a couple of things from me. First, give Serp HP fire so that you beat steel types easier and give it life orb instead of leftovers. Next, give Manaphy psychic instead of energy ball or Mega Venasaur will wall you. You have Serp and Thunderus to handle water types. Give Chomp a lum berry as Chomp can be crippled by burn or sleep and gives you a switch in for status
It would be great if you explained your EV spreads on Garchomp and Azumarill. For Serperior, I recommend Knock Off > Giga Drain since it receives HP recovery via Leftovers. For the last slot you can put in a Hidden Power Ice/Rock. As Aww_Shuckle suggested, HP Fire might not be a bad idea to beat steel types. Since you have no hazard removal, I suggest Life Orb on Thundurus over Focus Sash, as Life Orb + Nasty Plot deals powerful damage. Again as Aww_Shuckle mentioned, your team has trouble dealing with Mega Venusaur so I agree that Psychic > Energy Ball should be run on Manaphy, as none of your Pokemon besides Garchomp can 3HKO Mega Venusaur/Amoonguss without any boosts. Hope I helped :)
Congrats on your first team and welcome to smogon.
Initial thoughts: Your team has no mega, you have no hazard control, and you have weird sets on some mons. Let's try to fix this one by one:
Cosmic Power Clef is outclassed by CM Clef in the meta, and rarely will you get to +6 in three stats against a good player. Not only that, but your set can't beat dark types, which a Clef is supposed to do lol. I recommend changing it to the standard CM Clefable, which you can just find in the smogon dex.
Dragon Pulse doesn't seem to be too much of a benefit for your Serp, because as it stands, you already have other mons that could beat dragons, such as Azu and Clef. Knock Off is a good move and a surprise option, but I think that it's only useful for things like Chansey, which things like Chomp, Azu, and Clef already sorta beat. For this reason, I recommend you either change the set to a Taunt Serp or a Sub Serp, as not only does it let you beat stall easier, it also eases prediction on stuff like Bisharp. I would personally roll with:
Serperior @ Leftovers
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 56 HP / 200 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power Fire
- Substitute
- Leech Seed / Glare (for speed control)
With 56 HP ev's so Rotom-W can't break your sub, as it is a bit annoying to your team as of now.
Check the Smogon dex to tweak the ev's for Azu in order to outrun certain mons.
Your Garchomp is fine, although I'm not sure why you're using 12 HP ev's, lol. As it stands, your team just gets 6-0'd by Talonflame, Bisharp at +2, fast electrics after Clef has been weakened, and fast hard hitting physical attackers in general. Due to this, I recommend you actually change it to Tank Chomp to help deal with these threats:
Garchomp @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 240 HP / 176 Def / 92 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Dragon Tail
- Fire Blast / Endure / Toxic
Manaphy and Thundy are kinda redundant on this team, as they both accomplish the same thing of being wallbreakers and hitting like nukes. Although I'm a fan of these mons, they just seem a bit awkward on this team. Feel free to take my changes into account or not, but I'm gonna remove both of these and replace them with the following:
Latios > Manaphy. Latios not only helps you remove hazards, it also gives you a solid switch in to Keldeo, it also lets you remove hazards, which although aren't too annoying for the team, hamper things like Azu (who needs as much HP as possible to set up BD). It's also a good hard hitting dragon since you made Chomp into Tank Chomp to handle physical attackers better.
And lastly, Mega Metagross > Thundurus. I don't really see the point in Thundy here, as you already beat bulky waters with Serp. If you really need to keep an electric, you can choose to go with Mega Manectric, but I think Mega Gross just fits better here because it helps your team beat fairies, Heatran, and also helps you trap stuff like the Lati twins with Pursuit (if you choose to run it). Also Amoongus and Mega Venusaur just die to Zen Headbutt so you don't have to run Psychic (note what I'm about to say below) on Manaphy and lose coverage simply for these two mons. I don't really see the need for Ice Punch here as all your other mons help with Lando-T regardless.
Lastly, you can choose to swap Azu and Manaphy to your liking, but this just comes with you testing the team out. They're sorta interchangeable depending on what the team struggles with, but I'm not gonna test it lol.
Final team should be:
Clefable
Garchomp
Serperior
Azumarill / Manaphy
Latios
Mega Metagross
Far from perfect, but I definitely think it's better than before. gl
DownAbove Ill change chomp ev and azu for lat but I want to keep thundurus as it wrecks flying/water types with STAB thunderbolt, i recently swapped thunder wave for focus blast for T-Tar and for more general coverage. I want to keep D-pulse on serp so ill drop the speed control (tbh it already outspeeds non-scarf chomp so...)
Hey man, welcome to Smogon! I hope you have fun here.
You it has been a nice team despite not having a mega, which is paramount in the tier. Okay, so I see it as it suffers a lot to a common mega Mega Venusaur as is. You could get on Energy Ball Psychic or the following, it stops better idea; Metagross Mega
> Serperior
In this way not only you cover your biggest threat, but a lot of things that previously could not Clefable own as well. Speaking of the devil, a set like you have commented CM think it would be fine. You need a facelift. Then I leave both sets of changes and now you are free to try. But certainly I'm sure that will yield better and the results will come.
Going into this post, please understand that all of my suggestions are... suggestions. All I plan to do is identify problems and do my best to fix them. I'll try to explain my thinking for every change I suggest thoroughly, but if you disagree with any specific change or don't understand any of the changes I suggest, feel free to ask and/or argue. It's completely possible I didn't think about something while writing this wall of text. I'm only human, at least last time I checked.
Your biggest problem is that you get straight up walled by Ferrothorn with the team you have right now, which is kind of a big deal, especially when you don't have any hazard control. Sure, you can out-stall it with Clefable, but you're more likely to just let the opponent get free rocks and get phased, especially by stall and semi-stall teams. Running focus blast on Thundurus helps, but I don't think it really fixes the issue.
Similarly, Mega Venusaur sort of just shits on you by spamming Sludge Bomb. No hazards, but it hurts a lot. Having a way to deal with Ferro and Venu are probably your top priorities. Sneaking a Heatran into your team does that pretty well, but what exactly you give up for that is up to you.
One half measure against Ferrothorn you can take is running hp fire on Serperior. Don't run HP rock or ice on it - the only thing rock hits really is Talonflame which, while nice, is probably more easily dealt with somewhere else on your team. Similarly, running Giga Drain on Serperior is only good in very specific situations against teams that don't hit very hard. Serperior wall breaks fine even without the recovery from Giga Drain, so I don't see any reason your team particularly needs it when it doesn't really stop any of its counters anyhow.
~~~~~
I don't think having both Manaphy and Thundurus is redundant. They do very different shit, and Thundurus is a better Offense check than Manaphy by light-years, while Manaphy sort of singlehandedly eats most Balance/Bulky Offense teams with the right setup. I don't think redundancy is a particularly good reason to remove Thundurus.
Also, keep thunder wave. You absolutely need it if something fast like Mega-Alakazam or Mega-Lopunny gets past Clefable. You already have two bulky water types to handle Tyranitar and garchomp if it isn't running ice beam, so there's no real reason to run Focus Blast over T-Wave.
I don't think your team will be 6-0'd by Talonflame 100% of the time, like mentioned above, but it's definitely a threat considering that it outspeeds your entire team - bulk up and swords dance variations carrying roost are especially troublesome. You have a check in the form of Thundurus, but usually there's a good rule to follow when running Thundy as a flyspam check - always run it with another flying resist / bird check. If Talonflame boosts on you as you are now, you can assume that you're going to lose more than your opponent will - A bird switching in on Serperior running knock-off could mean you lose 2-3 pokemon at once.
There's a couple of different ways to get that second Talonflame check, but probably the easiest one to do is just by running a defensive set on your Garchomp - just even switching to rocky helmet is enough, but you might want to look at its EV spread and running stone edge too.
~~~~~
Next, I agree that your team just absolutely needs hazard control. Lots of people run it on almost every team, and while I personally believe it isn't always necessary, your team gives too many free switch ins to a large number of hazard setters including Skarmory, Ferrothorn, Chansey, Hippodown, Heatran, and every Roar/Whirlwind/DTail user not afraid of Clefable.
For your team as it is right now, the easiest thing to do would probably be switching Clefable for Mega Diance, but I realize you aren't exactly a fan of getting rid of it, and using magic bounce correctly is personally impossible for me. That shit's too hard and takes too much prediction, especially when you're against stuff like Heatran who can just throw out a flash cannon to make you cry.
Another option is just running Latios somewhere, because it works on like every team and you need a way to deal with M-Venu anyhow - but your team already has enough trouble with hard hitting fairy types so that's probably out of the question too.
Truthfully, there's probably only five or six real hazard removers in OU right now, and your best choice is probably Manaphy -> Starmie. Starmie is really good. Check out the Strategy Dex for some good sets, because honestly all you need from it is a way to spin and a way to kill M-Venu. But that's boring.
So instead, I'm going to suggest some weird stuff. These mons have been around forever and are normally outclassed by like, everything, but they're interesting and hilarious to use in the right situations. You may turn out better off just by like replacing Garchomp with Excadrill or picking up Starmie over Manaphy, but it's honestly up to you. These suggestions are just to give you some alternatives that you may not immediately think of.
Other Potential Hazard Control to replace Manaphy
All of these pokemon are somewhere on the spectrum of really really OK to terrible, but I'll give my two cents on each of them and what they could potentially provide to your team over Manaphy, and the upsides and downsides to each. There isn't any specific order to these. Giving sets in spoiler tags.
Torkoal
This this is honestly stronger than it looks. It has higher physical defenses than Skarmory, has access to rapid spin and will-o-wisp, and absolutely no recovery. If it got recover you might actually see it everywhere. Honestly, it sucks and is completely outclassed by Heatran except for Rapid Spin. Interesting for its novelty. Also Vapes.
Pros:
Espeon
Original Magic Bouncer. Still an OK choice. Can kill Mega-Venu. Useful if you hate thinking but like hitting really hard. If you're looking at this one you might do better just getting Starmie.
Pros:
DownAbove Ill change chomp ev and azu for lat but I want to keep thundurus as it wrecks flying types with STAB thunderbolt, i recently swapped thunder wave for focus blast for T-Tar and for more general coverage. I want to keep D-pulse on serp so ill drop the speed control (tbh it already outspeeds non-scarf chomp so...)
You absolutely need a Mega and MegaGross definitely improves this team. It's up to you whether or not to keep Dpulse, but the coverage it provides (literally just dragons) isn't necessary. It's fine if you want to keep Thundy, just replace Azu with it, but then you lose some coverage.
To defend my points, maybe redundant was the wrong word bc I am completely aware Manaphy and Thundy do different things, but I just think they have weird synergy with the other mons on this team. You don't really need to "wreck flying types", as the only one you see that much in OU is Talon, which you already check with TankChomp. If you keep Thundy, I highly suggest keeping twave as it would highly benefit your team.
Then, me saying Talonflame 6-0's your team isn't saying you absolutely lose to it, but the fact that you have no switch ins at ALL and barely any way to beat it means you lose to it at +2. It really is as simple as that, no exceptions, as it even does like 70+ to Thundy, which is where TankChomp comes into play.
Lastly, Starmie > Manaphy is a good suggestion you should consider. But definitely don't run Torkoal or those other ones, lol.
gl and please change Thundy's focus sash if you keep Thundy bc it hurts my eyes
Lots of stuff to look at here! Ignus , Ha In Kang , DownAbove I have made some changes based on your suggestions (see OP)
A few notes
1: I left clef as-is with cosmic power vs CM because cosmic gives both def and spdef, allowing clef to stall, this also boosts the fuck out of of stored power (at +6/+6 stored power is 260) I did put moonblast for charge beam however I am sorta on the fence on this one, ill do more testing and get back.
2: I swapped azu for standard latios (defog/draco meteor/Psyshock/Roost)
3: I swapped manaphy for breloom because weavile can sweep me easy as fuck and breloom can oneshot weavile with mach punch.
4: Moved thundurus's setup around, adding ttaunt for enemy skarmory
