Lighthouse Episode

Yeah... it's another rain, sorry. :/ On the bright side, I'm not using Thundurs T. This team has no dedicated sweeper, but rather things just play out and we see who ends up being the biggest MVP. Everyone but Politoed and Celebi has the potential to kill, while still being fairly hard to remove. This means I have something of a 4.5 mon defensive core, and a 3.5 mon offensive core. Trippy.




Djin (Politoed) @ Leftovers Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Hypnosis
- Perish Song
- Protect
Obligatory weather inducer, made as defensive as possible to stay alive a long time. Scald is cool... doesn't used often though. Perish song for phazing, and hypnosis catches counters on the switch (usually Tyranitar/Ferrothorn) On one hand perish song takes a while to kick in, but it goes through protect and gets baton passed making it quite nasty. Protect lets Poli stall for perish song, get leftovers recovery, and thus hit the front lines more often.


Aegis (Ferrothorn) @ Leftovers Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 148 Def / 108 SDef
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Gyro Ball
- Thunder Wave
- Leech Seed
- Protect
Ferro is great at taking hits... yes... but it's also good at killing fast dragons. With an attack stat that isn't too bad, and the immense power of Gyro Ball it often ends up single handedly killing 1x boosted dragons. Leech seed is necesary for recovery due to the lack of wish support, and protect makes it actually dependable for that purpose. Thunderwave is greatly appreciated by later to be mentioned Dragonite


U.F.O. (Tentacruel) @ Black Sludge Trait: Rain Dish
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Rapid Spin
- Toxic
- Protect
Ferrothorn's partner in crime, Tentacruel is a mean contender. I ignored scald since the team is allready rife with paralysis and toxic, and surf didn't have enough oomph to legitmize the replacement. Hydro pump though allows for 2HKOs on many pokemon... and this guy's job is actually to take hits. The cool part about this is that he doubles as a self healing defender, AND rapid spinner. Toxic puts certain mons out of commission, and protect makes Tentacruel viable through passive healing.


Sprite (Celebi) @ Leftovers Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SDef
Calm Nature
- Psychic
- Thunder Wave
- Heal Bell
- Recover
This was the last slot filled on the team, with Chansey being the other contender. Celebi won out due to it's helpful resistances. Basically I wanted more paralysis, and cleric work done to keep the Dragon and it's weather alive. The all around defensive spread keeps the team healer kicking with recover, and psychic... well it wanted at least one attacking move.


Cooler (Toxicroak) @ Leftovers Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 244 HP / 132 Atk / 120 Def / 12 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Sucker Punch
- Bulk Up
- Substitute

Fighting type? Check. Yeah, it's the standard toxicroak set, though he lends and gains certain benefits to/from this team. 1st, Dragonite often removes pokemon that could wall him. 2nd, his presence keeps the weather from changing when the opponent depends on Tyranitar.


Stormbringer (Dragonite) @ Leftovers Trait: Multiscale
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SAtk
Modest Nature
- Ice Beam
- Hurricane
- Thunder
- Roost
Multiscale has never been so useful. With rapid spin support, Dragonite often finds chances to enter the ring and stretch it's wings without a care in the world. Multiscale isn't for switching in on attacks though. Rather it's for surprise kills it didn't deserve. It means that Ice beam can be used on mons like Garchomp, Salamence, and Landorus, that constant roosting actually beats out Draco Meteor, and that any ice user within KO range is in for a surprise. Sacraficing speed for survivability makes this guy the strongest threat on the team, and thunder wave can sometimes allow him to forget his ev spread. Ice beam was just for surprising dragons, while Hurricane and Thunder give huge power and great coverage. Finally roost allows for abuse of multiscale, which is necesary without any wish support. If you haven't guessed, Dragonite is the major pivot of the team, removing important threats/walls, and gaining great benefits from team mates like paralysis, stone removal, and status healing.

Hey man, nice team.

^ That Celebi set doesn't really check Thundurus-T though. It can take hits from and heal vs. the Scarf/EBelt sets, but can't do anything to stop the NP variants from setting up and taking a dump all over this team. Stick with Psychic so that Celebi can at least wear it down to the point that LO recoil will kill it off before it gets to do some real damage. Also Baton Pass > U-turn so you can escape from Pursuit users.

Specs Tornadus outspeeds and can OHKO/2HKO everything here. Consider swapping Ferrothorn for SDef Jirachi so your team doesn't just crumple and fold in its presence. This opens you up a bit more to Dragons, so you can replace Toxicroak with a bulky Landorus-T (which is a much better Terrakion check, and Keldeo is already covered well by the rest of your team). This also gives you a decent Stealth Rock user, which you sorely lack at the moment.

I think you should also consider running a Timid Nature on Tentacruel with an EV spread of 200 HP / 212 Def / 96 Spd. Mamoswine seems like another big problem 'mon for this team - for the trade of some bulk, you'll gain the ability to outspeed it and OHKO it with rain boosted Scald. It's still problematic for you, but at least now it will be just slightly less of an asshole.



Hope I helped. Good luck!

Hello there nice team!

Looking at it, I see that Mamoswine, Tornadus and Rock Polish Landorus are all big threats for this team: you haven't switch into Mamoswine and Tornadus, and Landorus can setup on Toxicroak and if Celebi is dead or weakened (Tyranitar which is a common teammate of Rock Polish Landorus can Pursuit your Celebi without any problem for example, so even if you have Celebi, Landorus is a threat anyway) it can smash your team easily. Therefore, I suggest you to use Bronzong replacing Ferrothorn which can put the Stealth Rock and check the Dragon-types too and which can wall well Mamoswine and Tornadus and which can check very well Rock Polish Landorus. An EV spread of 252 HP / 168 Def / 88 SpD with a moveset of Gyro Ball, Stealth Rock, Hidden Power Ice and Earthquake, with Sassy nature, with Leftovers and with 0 IV on Speed should work fine on your team.

Then, I suggest you to use Toxic replacing Hypnosis which is useful to poison bulky Water-types such as Gastrodon, Slowbro and Jellicent which can be troublesome for your team; Toxic is in general a really good move with Protect because it allows to wither away the HP of Pokèmon, which is always useful. Otherwise Hypnosis isn't a really good move in my opinion because it has 60% of accuracy, which is really bad.

After that, I suggest you to follow Dr Ciel's suggestion about Tentacruel because it's good; 20 EVs on Spe allows to outspeed Breloom which is a threat for this team since it can beat without any problem Politoed, Ferrothorn and Tentacruel, and Scald allows to try to get a burn on Breloom which could help you a lot against it, Scald is in general a better move than Hydro Pump on Tentacruel because it never misses and allows sometimes to get an useful burn.

As last thing, I suggest you to use Baton Pass replacing U-Turn on Celebi which would help you against Pursuit users such as Choice Band Scizor and Tyranitar which are a big problem for Celebi; if you lose Celebi, Rock Polish Landorus is quite troublesome so you should try Baton Pass on Celebi to avoid Scizor and Tyranitar's Pursuit and see how it works during your matches.

Good luck!

So first thing I did was try out the Jirachi+ Landorus combo. It works fairly well, except that I suddenly realized why rain teams need a fighting type so badly: With fire nerfed by my own weather, moves like hp fire are silly to carry meaning ferrothorn is a truest wall to my team. So without a fighting move in tow neutral damage does maybe 30% at most, and then leech seed steals my Dragonite or landorus' massive bulk.

Also using thunder over thunder wave or body slam on jirachi is tempting, but slowing down a foe is an early game tactic for gaining advantage, meaning I can't depend on the rain always being there. In other words, it doesn't work against sand.

Toxic for hypnosis was a good idea. I thought it was redundant with scald and Tentacruel already packing, but it's just too hard to justify hypnosis.

Hey Chaoswalker, nice team!

First of all, you have quite a large weakness to sun. 2 of your Pokemon are weak to Fire, 2 of your Pokemon have their attacks weakened by Sun, Toxicroak takes damage every turn from sun, and finally 2 of Dragonite's attacks are only 50% accurate in the sun. Not only this. but the standard offensive sun Volcarona (Quiver Dance / Fire move / Bug Buzz / Hidden Power [Ground]) can setup on almost everything, and then it outspeeds and OHKOs the majority of your team at +1, Politoed may be able to come in on the Quiver Dance, but then you either have to Perish Song, which just delays the sweep, or risk the 60% accurate Hypnosis. Dragonite is generally a great Volcarona check, but your one can't check it under the sun (unless you want to risk the 50% accurate Hurricane.) Your best, least risky way of handling Volcarona is to set up rain then go to Dragonite, but every time you do that multiple Pokemon get damaged in the process and eventually Politoed will die, and a weakened Dragonite doesn't like a +1, sun boosted Fire move, nor does it like flipping a coin to see whther it gets to hit or not. There's also Venusaur who can setup on 50 of your team, then proceed to pretty much wipe the flaw with you if they can weaken Dragonite. To help remedy this situation, I suggest running Banded Dragonite over your current set, I also suggest Ice Beam over Toxic on Toxicroak, and Toxic over Hypnosis on Politoed. I understand that your current Dragonite is pretty cool, but Banded Dragonite is so much better under sun, it doesn't rely on innacurate moves to deal with Volcarona, and strong priority helps so much against a mass amount of sweepers. Your team doesn't do much to ensure Rain stays up, and that Dragonite is pretty useless outside of rain anyway. Ice Beam on Tentacruel just gives you another Venusaur check, and Toxic on Politoed is to make up for the loss of Toxic on Tentacruel.

Finally, I suggest you take every single one of Alexander.'s suggestions, you are quite weak to dragons, as well as many of the threats mentioned (especially Mamoswine), so Bronzong is a great idea. Not only that, but Baton Pass on Dr. Ciel's Celebi is much better than U-Turn, considering U-Turn does nothing, and pursuit users are very, very common atm.

Anyway, I hope this rate helped and GL with the team :)