At first, what might these red flags be you are talking about?
A week ago I started breeding for a new Battle Subway team as I was eager to try the moody bidoof (bibarel) I got from the DW on the sub. Whimsicott was an obvious choice for me because of Prankster. This was the first time I was going to try my luck in any Battle building ever since I was too lazy to breed a proper team on Gen IV (getting flawless pokemon is so much easier nowadays because of RNG). So I googled if Smogon had any advice to give me. I found out this thread and Jumpmans Gen IV record made me whoa so I decided to take his Drapion (with the exact same EV spread and the moveset since with my experience I couldn't possibly think any better) as my last team member.
The first time I tried the team I won the Subway Boss but almost right after that I encountered a Veteran with all those legendary pokemon. I managed to setup Drapion very easily and Crunched my way through 2 of the Veterans pokemon. The last one however was a Cobalion. I started with Crunch, Cobalion didn't do anything serious so I Crunched again. Cobalion used Sacred Sword and my sub broke. I wasn't actually aware of the fact that SSword ignores the evasion boosts as well as the defense boosts so that Cobalion with +2 on Attack ended up beating the rest of my team as well. During my 185 win run I only encountered one Cobalion, and it had Focus Blast instead of SSword so I had no problem with that (though I would have known how to handle the SSword one this time if it had appeared).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Zacchaeus
I've done very extensive testing of Acupressure Drapion and it's terrible this time around. And since your Drapion can't deal with Whirlwind, Roar, Taunt, or other moves like Encore to a lesser extent, it seems really unlikely. Moody was also bad in my experience but that one is easier to get lucky with. And you can't even deny that both Moody and Acupressure require tons of luck, and when you try to play upwards of 100 rounds with both of those, you're definitely more likely to fail than succeed. And you just copied the same EV spread, everything in that team looks like a red flag to me
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Well since most of the time I setup against a crippled starter, and the AI like never changes (except U-turn, Volt Switch) being able to Acupressure 21 times (or stalling with Protect,Sub with Bibarel) requires almost no luck at all. And if I can't cripple the starter more than just Stun Spore him, Bibarel can still stall very well. All you have to do is wait for the fp or the Evasion or Defense/Sp.Defense boost and you are able to keep stalling behind a sub (then you can even hit him with Waterfall for a possible flinch if you like). Most of the time I even try to keep Whimsicott alive so that if something unexpected happens I can make the other setupper a chance to do his job (with Memento).
And Roar, Whirlwind etc. don't like the +6 Evasion. I faced like 3-4 pokemons who actually got to use their Roar, Whirlwind against me and they all missed (I don't know if AI uses Roar/Whirlwind in a situation where I have only 1 pkmn left, but I don't at least remember seeing that). A few more used Dragon Tail, but since it won't work through a sub there was nothing to worry.
I found it very easy to setup my Dynamic Duo, since I had two options for every situation. If you say Dorapion is terrible this time around and have done some testing, maybe you're just doing it wrong? ;)