Pokemon Online Username: Alexandria
Hall of Fame Standing: Gold class
Dark Horse Pokemon Currently Working With: Suicune
Current Ladder Standing: 1000 -> 1331 -> 1371 -> 1399
Alright! Made dark horse again for this month!
I feel kinda bad about how I did this time. With the team I originally made, I kept getting so close to top 80, but just couldn't quite make it, so I decided to drop the team and use a team I already had with suicune added on to it. My first team had so much trouble dealing with common threats that smart playing could only take me so far. Looking back on it, I guess I was just trying to use Suicune as an inferior Latias, which is something that disappoints me. I started out using roserade and deoxys-D for dark horse in addition to suicune, but roserade wasn't pulling her weight and deoxys-D's hazard support doesn't really help suicune in what it aims to do. I only stuck with suicune because it's always been one of my favorite pokemon and I wanted to get it into the hall of fame before dropping it. Maybe my problem lay in the fact that I should have used a set other than CroCune. If anyone has any suggestions to my original team, I'd love to hear them. I wouldn't mind trying to make suicune as viable as possible lol.
Hall of fame team
This is just a baton pass team I made a loooong time ago, except I got rid of Celebi for Suicune. Suicune worked ok in this team. It's coverage helped frequently, but whatever.
Original team (peaked at 1331, rank 128)
This is the same team I tried making dark horse project with the first month, but barely failed to do so, which caused me to switch to cress. Once again, I couldn't quite make it. There are occasions where Suicune saves me from utter defeat, but there are also occasions where it's dead weight. Toxicroak and breloom are nightmares for this team. The only thing on my team that threatens breloom is tornadus. SD toxicroak basically 6-0s me. Ferrothorn is terrible to deal with as well. I essentially have to rely on getting a burn or weakening it enough for tornadus to finish it off with a hurricane. Gliscor and tentacruel are probably my most negotiable slots (I would say suicune, but since the team is aimed at supporting suicune, I guess I'm not going to get rid of it). Tentacruel gives me redundant electric weakness and gliscor can do absolutely nothing to gengar and skarmory, only adding to the list of pokemon I can't touch.
How did you choose your Dark Horse Pokemon for this project? I chose suicune simply because I utterly adore it. I've always found it to be one of the most beautiful pokemon ever since it was released and I wanted to get it into the hall of fame.
How did you go about building a team for your Dark Horse Pokemon? Before I decided to use my rain team, I attempted to use a balanced non-weather team with suicune, roserade, and deoxys-d. The idea seemed really great on paper. Suicune and roserade have good defensive synergy, deoxys-d can easily set up hazards, allowing for me to clean up late game with scarfed haxorus. In the end, it didn't work very well. After that I dropped roserade and deoxys-d and decided to use a rain team that utilized toxic spike support to help suicune deal with water absorbers who normally wall it. The team focused heavily on accumulating damage on the opponent through stealth rock damage and toxic stall gliscor to open the way for suicune to sweep or for tornadus to clean up. In the end, I barely missed hall of fame with it, so I decided to use a different suicune set on a baton pass chain as a last ditch effort to win if the chain got broken.
Do you think it is more difficult or less difficult to ladder with a Dark Horse Pokemon? Why? For my past 2 dark horse runs, I said easier, simply because everyone underestimates cress, despite the fact that she's an amazing wall, and dugtrio is already well-known for its utility. This time, however, I had a significantly harder time going up the ladder. My rating would constantly go up and down. As soon as I would get close to making hall of fame, I would end up losing several matches in a row, bringing me back down. Cress offered an amazing surprise factor, and I thought Suicune would do similarly, but it really didn't. I used CroCune, so it didn't bring much to the table as far as defensive or offensive surprise goes. Unlike Cress, Suicune intends to sweep the opponent late game. Where Cress gives the team defensive support in reflect and toxic/t-wave, Suicune requires extensive support from the entire team in order to have a chance at success.
How did you reach the Hall of Fame? At the very end of my run this time, I decided to completely change teams and use a baton pass team. It worked, because I really needed the change of pace.
What was the most challenging aspect of this project? Facilitating Suicune's sweep. There were just so many things I had to take into consideration before attempting to to set up Suicune. If my opponent had a water absorber, I had to be absolutely sure that it was badly poisoned before even attempting to calm mind. On top of that if my opponent had tentacruel on their team, I had to get rid of it as well, otherwise my t-spikes would be useless. Scarf rotom-w and scarf/specs latios were also hindrances in setting up with suicune. Not so much from their offensive presence, but from the constant threat of being tricked. I had ferrothorn who could safely switch in on both of them, and I always had to hope they would try to trick ferro, giving me an opportunity to set up with suicune later. The longer they held on to their choiced item, the worse position it would put me in if I couldn't nail them with a toxic from gliscor on the switch.
Pokemon Online Username: Centennial Festival
Hall of Fame Standing: 3 times ;D
Dark Horse Pokemon Currently Working With: Mew, Deoxys-D
Current Ladder Standing: 1000 -> 1374
4th time!
Team Importable
yay, I made it with mew! Mew is another of my favorite pokemon, who, unlike my previous dark horse suicune, pulls its weight excellently. My team is a pretty standard offensive team that's similar to the ones you used to see in the deoxys-s era. Deoxys-d functions almost nearly as well and exactly the same as its faster counterpart, having almost guaranteed 2 layers of hazards. One thing that I like about deoxys-d over deoxys-s is that it isn't always relegated to the lead position if I think my opponent is going to start with an unfavorable matchup. I can't express how much I love magic coat on deoxys. It laughs at opposing deoxys-d and sableye, as well as giving me a shot at sleeping venusaur who tries to set up in the sun, which can be a hassle for my team to deal with. For mew, I was inspired to use nasty plot mew after having seen snunch's success with it in ST8, and I was not disappointed at all by its performance. Mew is a powerhouse once it gets to +2, and, with deoxys-d support, it has to worry a lot less about barely missing the 1hko like it normally does. I originally had shadow ball over fireblast, which helped against lati twins occasionally, but being able to beat jirachi 1 on 1 was way too important for me to forgo fireblast. This team's biggest problem is easily tentacruel. Gengar can't spinblock it and there isn't a lot I can do to prevent it from getting toxic spikes out.
Replays:
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-Cen...mi--2012-03-12
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-Cen...d---2012-03-12
http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-Centennial-Festival-vs-Ciele--2012-03-12
How did you choose your Dark Horse Pokemon for this project? I just really like mew, and wanted to try out the nasty plot variant, since I usually use stallbreaker. I chose deoxys-d because I knew that mew needed hazard support to land important 1hkos, and deoxys-d imo is the best pokemon for quickly getting hazards down
How did you go about building a team for your Dark Horse Pokemon? It was really simple. I had mew and deoxys, so I used gengar to spinblock, rotom + scizor to build up hazard damage, and dragonite to simply tear holes in things. Dragonite turned out to be the weak link of the team. I found myself rarely using it for anything but extremespeeding to finish off pokemon who had gotten a dragon dance or chlorophyll sweepers.
Do you think it is more difficult or less difficult to ladder with a Dark Horse Pokemon? Why? Using mew was a lot easier than using suicune since mew has much more offensive diversity and brings a lot more instant power to the table. Another thing I liked about mew is the fact that a lot of people fear the stallbreaker set, giving me a free set up opportunity.
What was the most challenging aspect of this project? I found myself in more 50/50 situations than I usually experience. For example, if my opponent carried both celebi and mamoswine and I had rotom out, I wasn't able to reliably predict the switch. If I volt switch and hit mamoswine, I give it a free turn, but on the other hand, if I hydro pump celebi, I give it a free turn. Generally, the best I could do was to take the path to beat the pokemon that would give me a harder time. Mamoswine is a lot harder for my team to switch into, so I would usually hydro pump. If they went to celebi, Gengar is usually a safe switch in.