Research Week #2

yeah espeon is fuckin terrible lol. will try out deo-d next since all you guys are just using mence anyway.

NTT said:

Just broke the 1200 mark before being knocked down by hax, I hate Lugia. Will hopefully hit 1250 sometime tonight.

I really couldn't get the old pairing of two Dragon Dancers to work, it doesn't seem half as viable this gen from what I've played. I've taken Furai's suggestion of the Scarf+Moxie and that's been working great so far. The team I'm using is changing quite a bit and I'm still not 100% about what lineup works best or utilises Mence's qualities the most yet, so I'll post more if/when I hit bronze.

EDIT: I've just seen bronze is 1200-1250, not 1250+, fuuuuu. Need to pay moar attention.

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Oops. All fixed. Glad to see this thread is very active!

Furai said:

Oops. All fixed. Glad to see this thread is very active!

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That makes me feel slightly better, knowing that I didn't actually miss making the hall of fame and forget to prove it =P

This officially lets me call a day of avoid university work "productive"

Lessons learned up to this point:
-Try as you might, it can't be shoehorned into the same roles as Rayquaza to take advantage of the higher speed, 135Att is missing tons of KOs that I have come to expect on my usual team from Ray. The two play fundamentally differently, at risk of sounding like I'm stating the obvious.
-In my opinion, the "double dragon" strategy is nowhere near as effective this gen. There seem to be a lot more things capable of acting as a hard check/counter which stop the pairing from being as effective as it was in DPPt. If anything it works better the other way around, have Ray nuke Steels with V-Create (Which a lot of people aren't used to seeing on the ladder yet) to make sweeps with Scarfmence easier.
-The aforementioned Scarf+Moxie is bloody awesome, easily the best way to go with Mence and will no doubt feature on future teams. It's most effective in a heavy offence team capable of forcing as many switches into SR as possible (Spikes are nice too, but I scrapped them relatively early on because they ended up being redundant), then being employed late game to clean up. Hell you can even clean up mid-game with a lucky run of confusion and early removal of steel types.

I also used Espeon for a brief stint, more out of coincidence than for the sake of research, it ended up being a logical step during my initial team build. In short, it's pretty pointless. The only things Magic Mirror ever came up against were hazards and Dark Void, which were almost always found on Dialga and Darkrai respectively (Ferro and Forry have been very rare over the course of the day for some reason), both of whom absolutely trash Espy with their STABs. I ended up running something rubbish like Wish/Yawn/Baton Pass/Protect in an attempt to make it useful before fazing it out in favour of something that actually helps.

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I'm going to call it a day for now, will try and ladder further with the team tomorrow because I'm enjoying using it so far. No doubt I'll get hit by hax and end up back below 1200 when I'm on the verge of Gold, at which point I'll retire the team (Most likely accompanied by an RMT which I'll link here) and move onto Deoxys.

Update #2:


I think I'm gonna stop now. This team is almost a joke. I don't think I can beat good teams with it. Still, it was fun to play with it. I got to test another poke while laddering. SubCM Mewtwo is very effective and I originally thought of Espeon to bounce Tspikes that could ruin the set up. In the end it was more of a Gira-A, support Groudon and Ferrothorn switch in. Some of my EVs may look weird but I try to stay away from standard sets.

locoghoul and Fiction. are the first ones to get into the Hall of Fame, into the Silver Class! Good job guys, and the rest of you - keep it up! I want to see some GOLD

Okay, I'm going to do my best to ladder with Espeon, even though it's fucking shit.

Alt: EspyJUMP

My team:

I literally just took my old offensive team and slapped mence in + a few set changes. Oh, and also added subpunchPalkia for the luls but it actually worked quite well.

Due to having no actual weather I have problems with teams using weather abusers like Excadrill since it can spin away my hazards and just rape my team in general. Rain and sun are generally easy to handle but sand is pretty gay.

Wow, well done Splendi! You are the first one to get into Gold class! Good job! Can you get higher?~


And shrang I have updated you. Keep it up guys, let's see more gold!

Just hit silver:


My insights can be found a couple of posts above. I'm guessing we have to post our teams before we get put into the hall of fame thing?

Yeah, your team needs to be posted. Good work though!

Furai said:

Yeah, your team needs to be posted. Good work though!

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Thanks, I didn't think I'd get so high after a couple of days =P
I'll get my team up tomorrow. Already encountered a handful of smogon players while laddering so I'd rather not have my team made public while I'm still working with it. Same drill as yesterday though, if I end up dropping back too far I'll open up my team then move onto a new alt to try deoxys.

EDIT: Screw it, got up to 1335 then dropped down to 1285 after two losses. Here's the team, I'll take my silver =P
Here's the 1335 screenshot for the hall of fame:

testing espeon under the name switchback, so I don't leave it out

Moving onto Deoxys-D now, under the alt Soy El Gofre. My Mence team can be found in this post.

Feel free to post cool replays of your teams in action, especially those that highlight the use of the Research Week 'mon.

All has been updated, and yes, please do share with us some replays!

EDIT: For testing Deoxys-D, I will be using the alt Mirage.

I've been using Scarf Salamence like pretty much everybody else. Its an excellent Pokemon to use. Yes, I agree it lacks the raw initial power but Salamence builds up momentum like really quickly. After 1 kill, its attack stat hits like 550 something. Like I said in my earlier post, its all about creating the win condition for Salamence to function. If you can create the win condition Salamence can easily crush a unwary team. So, I got to like 1320, wanted to hit 1350, but lost an easy battle due to a misplay so whatever.



The basic idea around the team is pound the opponents team with Dialga throwing around Draco Meteor's and Thunder. Usually, even if the opponent has a Xatu, I practically can assure myself Stealth Rock. I use Dialga mostly as a suicide lead. Nearly every match I get at least one kill from Dialga and at least 1-2 lose over 50% of their health. Trying to switch around an LO Dialga is the stupidest thing ever (unless you are another LO Dialga lead). Just sac whatever mon, and revenge kill it. Once, Dialga is dead, phase 1 is over. After that I go into defense mode with Ghost Arceus, Kyogre and Ferrothorn sponging hits and laying Spikes. Palkia is often used as a pivot to get several important switch-ins. The main idea in phase 2 is to get down Spikes and take down whatever Steels the opponent has. This is not too difficult to be frank. Once the steels are down, I usually sac Ferrothorn (idc about Ogre) bring in Mence on a weakened mon. Its basically check mate. I already outlined this in the earlier post.

Moving onto Deoxys-D with my new alt too hate

The ladder hates me this morning. Some idiot leaves his scarf Ho-oh locked into BB against my max HP/def giratina and proceeds to crit me three times in a row. I've had Darkrai of all things get flinch hax consecutively against me, and somebody running Ice Beam on their Gyarados pull off a freeze. I've now rage quit for the day.

Rant over, time for something relevant...

Deoxys-D is a surprisingly good lead, I really wasn't expecting much at all. The first thing I tried was running it as a pseudo-lugia with hazards, then a pseudo-deo-S with bulk, neither worked, it needs to be played to it's own strengths rather than trying to emulate the psychics it has stuff in common with, but by the same token I've found both the analysis sets to be relatively ineffective. I've run a few different sets, but I've settled on a variant of the Utility Wall set, running max HP/Spe with Spikes/Recover/Seismic Toss/Magic Coat, and it's been pretty awesome. Other Deoxys leads get their stuff reflected back at them, Darkrai gets put to bed, Dialga gets laughed at without Draco Meteor and Groudon is laughed at in general. The only real lead it has issues with is good ol' Kyogre, whom I have a couple of counters for that have no issues switching in. The main issue that set faces is being used as setup bait once the opponent realises it's not carrying Taunt or Toxic, so I've found a couple of great partners in the form of Giratina and Balloon Heatran. Giratina can handle and PHaze most Arceus formes, Mewtwo and other special attackers, while Heatran can force the various dragons into locking themselves into Outrage or into using a weaker attack to break the balloon, giving an opportunity to throw out HP Ice.

tldr; Deoxys works quite well when played to it's strengths, doesn't use predictable sets and has proper support. It's not on the same scale of awesome as Mence, but it's certainly a viable player in various Ubers playstyles.

After testing with Espeon for a couple of days, I can say it isn't as terrible as I thought it would be, it just takes very careful play to make the most out of it. One wrong move and Espeon is pretty much gone. Currently sitting at 1346, hopefully soon to be higher.

As for sharing replays, here's one which I think highlights Espeon's use more than any of the other battles I've had using it: http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-switchback-vs-D4RR3N--04-avril-2012-at-16h28

Okay, I got everything updated.

I've been trying Deoxys-D for a short while, and I really like it in fact, but my team needs serious reconstructrion. :c

Team: http://pastebin.com/bpvJ5AW8

I'll try and get higher if you want me to, Furai, but that's my peak for now.

Between a combination of me being a pretty inexperienced stall user in Ubers and PO absolutely hating me, I'm getting absolutely nowhere with Deoxys. I can't seem to find a decent team build without being presented with a whole new host of weaknesses that patching up the last batch exposes. That being said, I do think there's promise in the Magic Coat set I mentioned a couple of posts back. While you might think it's utterly redundant when he have it's fellow research mate, Espeon, to use, but I would disagree for one big reason- team preview. There's only one reason that you're going to be using Espeon/Xatu in Ubers, and opponents are going to be aware of that from turn one and play accordingly. Magic Coat, on the other hand, isn't detectable until you actually use it. Both have their merits, but a clever player isn't going to throw out hazards or status when Espeon is a stone's throw away. Deoxys on the other hand lacks offensive presence while also being a pretty tough speed bump to drive over, making it a magnet for being set up on and statused. In the case of things like Dakrai and defensive Arceus formes, leading off with Deo-D can give you ample opportunities to cripple opposing leads right off the bat.

The 2nd fat deoxys-d set onsite is shit. It's like a wannabe ferro and blob mixed in one with shit typing... but at least it has taunt. The speed set is okay but you're better off using something silly like whimsicott =_=

Testing Salamence.

Alt: Jamm

Espeon sucks eggs for me and i can't make Deoxys-D work.

EDIT: just got awesome idea for Deo-D, doing that instead.

http://pastebin.com/rWGWXwWdhttp://pastebin.com/mzUX2rex

New peak, posting a new pastebin since I changed a couple of the sets a little.