Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Charizard-Mega-X. The first part of the core of this team. Manaphy takes care of Ground-, Rock-, and Water-types for Mega Charizard X and Zardx beats the Grass- and Electric-types for Manaphy. The Earthquake is something i slapped on to take care of heatran as he turned out to be somewhat of a problem when Manaphy fainted.
The second part of this core. Manaphy is a pokemon which seems to be really unprepared for nowadays. Ice Beam is for the tons of dragons roaming around nowadays, scald takes care of the abundance of landorus-T's and energy ball takes down rotom. Manaphy is able to take down a lot of the current metagame and thus a great pick for a team.
While Manaphy and Zard are both hard to stop once set-up, they both benefit greatly from some speed control as they aren't the faster mons right out of the gate. Thundurus was my pick to do this. Aside from that his Base speed of 111 allows him to deal some quick damage as well, sometimes even some lategame cleaning up. HP flying was picked to take care of M-Venu over HP Ice seeing as manaphy and Zard already had enough coverage combined with Clefable(HP Ice was chosen initially but swapped for flying after the addition of Clefable.
Really Standard Latias set. Chosen over her big brother because of healing wish which allows for some great cleaning up in the lategame after 'reviving' a crippled Pokemon, Zard mostly. Also A Nice Check for Keldeo who is quite threatening to the main core.
Clefable @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 84 SpD
Calm
- Soft-Boiled
- Moonblast
- Calm Mind
- Stealth Rock
Clefable was chosen in combination with Bisharp to from a Dragon/Fairy/Steel trio with latias for some better defensive coverage. She is the resident wall, dealing with Rotom-Wash and dealing with dragon types, whom latias and Zard aren't able to take down
Bisharp @ Life Orb
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch
- Swords Dance
3rd part of the DFS trio of this team. Mostly used for Knock off to get rid of lefties on a ton of mon or to set up on stall and deal some heavy damage mid game.
Conclusion
This is the first team i have built myself from scratch. There is probably way too much personal bias towards certain pokemon and that's why i picked them but i would love to hear any tips on this or where i might have totally gone wrong in my building proces. The games i played were pretty succesfull but seeing as i am only in the 1400's that probably isn't much of an achievement.
P.S. Apologies for the poor english, it is not my native tongue.
Your Team is very nice but I would change the EQ on Zard X -> Roost. Zard X can better set up with Roost and EQ only hits Tran. I don't like Adamant on Zard X because it cannot outspeed/speed tie Scarf Jirachi or Scarf Lando after one DD, imo Jolly is better. Because Stall is very popular, Rain Dance; Tail Glow; Psychic; Scald Manaphy fits better on this offensive built. Only Rain boosted +6 Scald can 2HKO Chansey (+6 252 SpA Manaphy Scald vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 333-393 (51.8 - 61.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO). The last thing that I would change is HP Flying Thundurus to HP Ice Thundurus. HP Flying is a nice lure for M. Venu but your Team has no problems with M. Venu (Zard X can set up on it if you have a sleep fodder, Latias and +3 Psychic Manaphy can both kill it)
I like your Team and it's very solid for your first built! Keep it up^^
i agree with jokes about adamant zard X. Scarf lando-t has been seeing more use lately so you need at minimum 184 speed+jolly to outspeed scarf lando. also u need a band ttar/sand switch in because once he's in or sand rush exca is in something is either dying or getting hit extremely hard. i suggest something like lando-t or tangrowth as they can handle sand fairly well.
thanks for the replies. Zard outspeeding jirachi and lando has been a huge help. I haven't seen a lot of stall myself but i'll try the R-dance set for a bit.
I was thinking about Lando-T but couldn't really decide which pokemon to drop to put him in. Bisharp maybe?
hey, the goal or concept of this team is pretty basic in terms of focusing on a dd zardx sweep alongside healing wish support with breakers / lures to help it accomplish what its meant to do. although offensively you are capable of executing your goal, the build is pretty weak to a few threats, mainly referring to swords dance bisharp as it can find setup opportunities on latias and clefable quite easily as they can't do much back, at this point you are forced into a position where you have to play around it, which is definitely shaky. also, variants of excadrill (both scarf and sand rush, mostly the latter though) have a pretty simple time of running through your team and your only real form of counterplay is bisharp's sucker punch which does need prior damage to ohko + you may risk your best chance at cleaning late game, or keeping manaphy extremely healthy which may be difficult. furthermore, the lack of a fairy resist isn't that great even if its a more offensively based team; relying on clefable to switchin to pokemon such as mega diancie may not be reliable as max atk variants do 2hko you with diamond storm. there are a few other things that annoy the team but all have better ways of dealing with them, and there are some small optimizations that need to be made for the team to function better.
first off, i'd ditch cm rocks clefable for physdef rocks landorus-t. overall, mono attacking cm clefable is a set i'm definitely not a fan of as it can be taken advantage of much more easier by common stuff (lack of a secondary coverage move like flamethrower for steels / amoong or thunder wave to cripple its checks leaves it much more vulnerable and just saps momentum). landorus-t provides an excellent check to all variants of excadrill which i mentioned is hella threatening to the team, while maintaining a stealth rock user to contribute to the goal of charizard-x sweeping as well as punishing physical attackers / priority via rocky helmet which can be really beneficial to put stuff in range of one of your attacks. even though landorus-t does contribute multiple ways to the team, your main dragon resist in clefable is lost, meaning pokemon like latios can get out hand (especially as it can come in on a few members), but this will be remedied.
now, as i mentioned above, the lack of a fairy resist means you are susceptible to mons like mega diancie and mega gardevoir (mainly the former due to the higher speed tier / typing) as they can spam their STAB attacks quite easily. the fastest mon on your team being thundurus is sort of iffy as well, and while it typically does have an excellent matchup against offense, it may get limited turns to come in freely due to its stealth rock weakness. with that said, i am suggesting that you run scarf jirachi as opposed to bisharp. to give a quick list of benefits: pivots into dragon / fairy attacks from threatening mons, provides a pivot for momentum purposes, secondary healing wish user which can definitely come in handy on offensively based teams, as well as a revenge killer that isn't susceptible to constantly coming in on stealth rock (stuff like alakazam, serperior, and others can become issues too). bisharp can be useful with priority or another option at winning the game, but role compression is still a problem with the team + the utility jirachi provides is too useful, along with the fact that the combination of your offensive mons are enough to formulate a late game "plan" that you can execute to win.
this next change that i will bring up is one that albeit changes the original core a little bit, it doesn't deviate from the original goal much, but actual more effectively contributes to the team overall. the main immediate breaker in thundurus, while it does its job, i don't think its enough to pave the way for dd charizard-x to effectively clean granted the situation. manaphy, although can theoretically setup on charizard-x's checks, it really needs to be setup in order to break past stuff as without a +3 tail glow boost, its honestly not that strong and on a defensive standpoint, does not provide a lot to the team. mons like opposing bisharp and weavile are still giant nuisances to the team as between their forms of priority / great speed respectively, they will be doing a number to your team. for these reasons, i am suggesting specs keldeo as opposed to manaphy. due to its defensive typing / overall bulk alongside multiple healing wish users, keldeo provides this team with an actual switchin to dark types, and assuring that you will not get swept late game by what i mentioned earlier. unlike tg manaphy, specs keldeo is an immediate wallbreaker that is capable of crippling / pressuring / removing every single charizard-x check and still does an effective job at dealing with bulkier teams, especially with the team support provided. keldeo also has a better speed tier to revenge kill some of the mons in the crowded base 102 and below range, while not really changing what you want to get out of this team in terms of a goal, but rather improves it.
those are pretty much all of the major changes i wanted to make to help your team, but there are a few small optimizations i also want to bring up which should help in the long run. a jolly nature is preferred on offensive dd charizard-x as opposed to adamant to outspeed mons such as scarf landorus-t at +1 which is quite common, as well as speed tying with some mons in the base 100 speed tier. if you're finding some stuff like mega manectric, thundurus, and keldeo troublesome, you can alter your latias' ev spread to 72 hp / 184 spatk / 252 speed which helps with rolls on all of those three, while also hitting a life orb number. focus blast instead of grass knot on thundurus is something that you can take into consideration as stuff like ferrothorn stacks spikes on the team quite easily / annoys you with leech seed shenanigans, and also hits heatran / ttar among others super effectively, this also allows you to run roost > eq on charizardx which is really useful while setting up late game, or if you need to come in early on for some reason. ......
Landorus-Therian @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 232 Def / 28 SpD
Impish Nature
IVs: 29 Spe
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge / Knock Off
- U-turn
ok so, even though it may seem as many changes were made, every single one of them are useful in some way of contributing to the main goal of the team / providing the tools to win any given matchup (stall is a bit tougher which is the main drawback of losing manaphy), and they did not take away from the original idea of the team which was zardx + hw support. if you have any further questions, feel free to pm. gl
