Just a note: the team I used for the DW #pokemon challenge was a slightly different version than the one here, with jellicent over slowbro. This is the version I RMTed because of the higher peak.
Hey everyone,
I'm relatively new to Smogon but have played PO for a while. Some of you may have seen my previous DW RMT, which is the team this one is very very loosely based on. This is the RMT for what has been my most successful team, DW or otherwise. I won the DW #pokemon challenge with a variation of it (co-won with ShakeItUp), occupied (and do as of 5/4/12) #s 1, 2, and 3 on Smogon simultaneously with 3 of my accounts, all with well over 1600 points, and got to 1679 (and climbing) points on my main alt, a number few battlers I know of have reached in DW (mostwanted is the only one I know of recently, although there may be some others). This team has lost perhaps 3 or 4 battles since being developed to its most recent version, out of the dozens I’ve played with it. It has had an extremely good win ratio against some of the top DW battlers, including mostwanted, taylor, brii (although I think he was testing during many of our battles), and ShakeItUp. The team has gone through an incredible number of versions even beyond those listed below, sometimes of an item change and sometimes of several pokes. Overall though, I think this team manages to epitomize the state of the ladder at the moment and be very successful without being too standard, and has been very enjoyable both to design and to play with.
THE TEAM
PROCESS
IN-DEPTH
Tyranitar @ chople berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 232 HP / 8 Def / 240 SDef / 28 Spe
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SpA)
- Stealth Rock
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
ROLE
Ttar sets up sand, rocks, and is an overall beast. It is the team’s special wall while providing a great physical presence to muscle past pokes like slowbro and reuniclus. A simple role, but it does it great. The EV spread is one I designed. HP is maximized while rounding down SR. Incredibly, the 8 Def EVs guarantee Ttar can survive an unboosted EQ from excadrill or garchomp at full health. The Spe EVs are an anti-meta move on my part. I didn’t want to give full investment as I needed a tanky set, so my priority was to outrun other bulky ttar since superpower + chople berry basically guaranteed me beating them. I figured most would maximize HP and Atk or something with the same EV adjustment for SR damage I had. So I calculated how many EVs that would leave for speed, and put one more than that in. I’m not sure if that specific number has come in handy, but I do know that my Ttar has outsped every other bulky tar I’ve seen. Finally, the rest of the EVs are dumped in SpD, with an adamant nature cause ttar’s base attack is so high and I wanted him to have definite offensive presence. Chople berry allows me to beat other ttar easily as well as proving invaluable for sponging random focus blasts, hp fightings, and mach punches. Ttar isn't the star player of the team, but boy is he consistent.
Garchomp @ leftovers
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Naive nature (+Spe, -SpD)
- Substitute
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
ROLE
One of the most powerful Pokémon in DW, Garchomp takes a bit more of a backseat role in this team, although it is an extremely vital one. With substitute and the prevalence of sub + SD chomp, this is an incredible lure for skarmory and other physical walls, which chomp quickly cripples with fire blast. Swords dance wasn’t needed as much because chomp is just meant to be taking out key defensive pokes on the enemy team, not sweeping through it himself. This isn’t to say he doesn’t get a fair share of the sweeping though. Dragon + fire + ground gives perfect coverage on literally everything and hits many pokes super-effective, meaning chomp destroys teams lacking a check to him. His best quality though is his ability to remove many of terrakion’s checks. I chose lefties cause he’s not really meant to be sweeping and I value his ability to come in repeatedly over a speed or power boost.
Deoxys @ life orb
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 Spa / 252 Spe
Naive nature (+Spe, -SpD)
- Psycho Boost
- Superpower
- Hidden Power [fire]
- Thunder(bolt) / ice beam
ROLE
Offensive deoxys-s is one of the most effective late-game cleaners or evene just sweepers out there. Furthermore, his ability to go mixed in a huge bonus for a team like this, since I end up getting hindered by classic skarmbliss cores. + speed is necessary to outspeed +1 garchomp, scarfgenesect, scarflandorus, and everything below them. Psyhco boost is a STAB attack and incredibly powerful with maximum SpA investment, while superpower compliments it nicely, both in terms of coverage and hitting on the physical side of the spectrum. Hidden power [fire] allows deoxys to OHKO genesect and scizor, two big threats, while denting ferrothorn a ton. I really have debated over the last slot—ice beam is fantastic for hitting garchomp and other dragons, but leaves deoxys unable to hit pokes like slowbro and chandelure for even neutral damage. Thunder(bolt) on the other hand offers coverage on these and also serves to make deoxys a fantastic tool against rain teams—making thunder a viable option over thunderbolt. I’m using ice beam at the moment, but might change this later on.
Slowbro @ leftovers
Trait: Regenerator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 40 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Psychic
- Flamethrower
- Toxic
ROLE
Slowbro is one of the most underrated Pokémon in DW IMO. With base 95 HP and base 110 Def, it shrugs off physical hits easily and hits tons of stuff for super-effective damage. Regenerator means slowbro doesn’t need a slot for a recovery move, letting it get great coverage. Finally, slowbro’s incredible defensive typing allows it to counter things like keldeo and blaziken before it was banned. Scald and psychic provide solid neutral coverage and give STAB, with scald hitting many SS pokes, like Ttar and excadrill, for supereffective damage. Psychic meanwhile is used for countering fighting-types like keldeo, conkeldurr, machamp, and even breloom if spore has been used. Finally, flamethrower is a great move to easily 2HKO ferrothorn and skarmory and OHKO predicted scizor and genesect switch-ins. Toxic is used to hit opposing tanks slowbro can’t do much against, and especially to get politoed and ninetales. While slowbro is probably not winning many MVP awards, he is about the most reliable poke in DW.
Genesect @ choice scarf
Trait: Download
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive (+Spe, -SpD)
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
ROLE
While overused, genesect is nothing if not effective. The choice scarf set is great for this team, as it is rather slow and genesect really helps mid-game with its immediate power. Calling him the glue would be too clichéd, and he really isn’t; he’s more like the duct tape used to patch up the weaknesses. Need a poke with an electric attack to hurt water types? Genesect. Need someone to finish off a weakened opponent and give me a switch of my choice? Genesect. Etc. Really such an effective and versatile Pokémon. Naïve is chosen since most attacks gene will take are priority, which are mostly physical, and so that opposing genesect get a SpA boost making it much safer to switch to Ttar to sponge a predicted elemental attack in case of an unpredicted u-turn.
Terrakion @ air balloon
Trait: Justified
EVs: 4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly (+Spe, -SpA)
- Rock Polish
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
ROLE
The STAR of the team. Although ridiculously popular in standard OU, terrakion for some reason is rarely seen in DW, and most of the time when it is it is as a scarfer. Seriously though, this set probably takes the place for best set in DW at the moment IMO. Double dancing is as always a potent strategy, functioning equally well against offensive teams as against stallish ones. Terrakion is even better at this due to the coverage provided by its STABs. However, the DW metagame is absolutely perfect for this set due to Terrakion’s incredible speed, sheer destructive power, and ability to smash through physical walls due to the coverage of its STABs. Furthermore, and this is perhaps the best thing about terrakion for me: he gets SOOO many opportunities to set up. Seriously. It sets up on excadrill. It sets up chandelure. It sets up on garchomp. It even sets up on genesect, perhaps the most versatile Pokémon in DW. +1 thunderbolt cant even 2HKO in sandstorm, giving terrakion time to rock polish, swords dance, and proceed to destroy literally every team lacking full-health skarmory, focus sash users, SE miss, ditto, breloom, or scarf deoxys (lol). And because of its incredible STAB coverage, it can even set up on and then bust through things like skarmory, as +2 CC does around 80% to even the most defensive version, compared to excadrill’s +2 rock slide managing 30%. Gliscor is 2HKOed by SE factoring in poison heal. Gensect is OHKOed at +0 after two SR switch ins. Seriously, calcs can not show how effective this set is. The MVP of the team almost every time, really only fails to shine against teams with lots of mach punch users.
For those who want to try it out:
Hey everyone,
I'm relatively new to Smogon but have played PO for a while. Some of you may have seen my previous DW RMT, which is the team this one is very very loosely based on. This is the RMT for what has been my most successful team, DW or otherwise. I won the DW #pokemon challenge with a variation of it (co-won with ShakeItUp), occupied (and do as of 5/4/12) #s 1, 2, and 3 on Smogon simultaneously with 3 of my accounts, all with well over 1600 points, and got to 1679 (and climbing) points on my main alt, a number few battlers I know of have reached in DW (mostwanted is the only one I know of recently, although there may be some others). This team has lost perhaps 3 or 4 battles since being developed to its most recent version, out of the dozens I’ve played with it. It has had an extremely good win ratio against some of the top DW battlers, including mostwanted, taylor, brii (although I think he was testing during many of our battles), and ShakeItUp. The team has gone through an incredible number of versions even beyond those listed below, sometimes of an item change and sometimes of several pokes. Overall though, I think this team manages to epitomize the state of the ladder at the moment and be very successful without being too standard, and has been very enjoyable both to design and to play with.
THE TEAM
PROCESS
After seeing lots of rock polish genesects (as well as ShakeItUp’s agiliscor in his OU RMT), I realized how good speed-boosting pokes were in this metagame and decided to make a team based around a speed-booster. I tried out genesect and gliscor and even looked at sharpedo in a moment of desperation before settling on salachomp. Ttar was a necessity to activate sand veil.
I needed a physically bulky poke to wall excadrill, garchomp, landorus, breloom, and the other physical threats of DW. I went with the classic physical wall, skarmory. He would also help me to prepare for an end sweep by laying down spikes. I also needed a special wall and a counter for rain teams. Jellicent was my choice, as I had used it before with skarm and they work very well together (they basically cover each others weaknesses except for electric, which chomp can exploit).
With the core now complete, I had room to add some sweepers. Gensect had always been one of my favorites, and his versatility and coverage always make him worthwhile. I decided to use the scarf set cause my team was relatively slow.
I realized I had no priority and that I was very breloom weak. I decided to try out jolly LO mamoswine, which would solve my breloom problems as well as providing a great check for garchomp, gliscor, and other dragons.
Although this team worked well, I was running into the problem that skarmory and jellicent were my only pokes with defensive capabilities whatsoever, but really had no offensive presence. Furthermore, I was losing to strong fighting type physical attackers like band terrakion, as CC 2HKOs skarm with rocks and jellicent gets mauled by SE. At this point, I decided to can my walls and come up with something new. I needed a rain check that could attack and walls on both sides of the spectrum. I decided to try out slowbro and make ttar a more specially defensive spread.
I still needed a 6th slot, so I tried to find what the problems with this team were. The main issue that kept coming up with these four pokes was that garchomp just wasn’t fast enough, even at +1. Just about every team carries at least one of scarfchomp, scarfterrakion, deoxys, excadrill, scarfkeldeo, or something of the like, meaning that unless I had some way to beat them I had no chance of sweeping. In addition, mamoswine kept disappointing me due to his low speed and being walled completely by any physical wall. This led me to swap mamo for mixed attacker deoxys-s, whose speed made up for the lack of priority but wouldn’t get walled as easily. Then the most important decision came. I wanted a speed-booster, someone with a strong physical presence that brought something new to the team. I thought for a long time before deciding on the perfect Pokémon: terrakion.
I needed a physically bulky poke to wall excadrill, garchomp, landorus, breloom, and the other physical threats of DW. I went with the classic physical wall, skarmory. He would also help me to prepare for an end sweep by laying down spikes. I also needed a special wall and a counter for rain teams. Jellicent was my choice, as I had used it before with skarm and they work very well together (they basically cover each others weaknesses except for electric, which chomp can exploit).
With the core now complete, I had room to add some sweepers. Gensect had always been one of my favorites, and his versatility and coverage always make him worthwhile. I decided to use the scarf set cause my team was relatively slow.
I realized I had no priority and that I was very breloom weak. I decided to try out jolly LO mamoswine, which would solve my breloom problems as well as providing a great check for garchomp, gliscor, and other dragons.
Although this team worked well, I was running into the problem that skarmory and jellicent were my only pokes with defensive capabilities whatsoever, but really had no offensive presence. Furthermore, I was losing to strong fighting type physical attackers like band terrakion, as CC 2HKOs skarm with rocks and jellicent gets mauled by SE. At this point, I decided to can my walls and come up with something new. I needed a rain check that could attack and walls on both sides of the spectrum. I decided to try out slowbro and make ttar a more specially defensive spread.
I still needed a 6th slot, so I tried to find what the problems with this team were. The main issue that kept coming up with these four pokes was that garchomp just wasn’t fast enough, even at +1. Just about every team carries at least one of scarfchomp, scarfterrakion, deoxys, excadrill, scarfkeldeo, or something of the like, meaning that unless I had some way to beat them I had no chance of sweeping. In addition, mamoswine kept disappointing me due to his low speed and being walled completely by any physical wall. This led me to swap mamo for mixed attacker deoxys-s, whose speed made up for the lack of priority but wouldn’t get walled as easily. Then the most important decision came. I wanted a speed-booster, someone with a strong physical presence that brought something new to the team. I thought for a long time before deciding on the perfect Pokémon: terrakion.
IN-DEPTH
Tyranitar @ chople berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 232 HP / 8 Def / 240 SDef / 28 Spe
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SpA)
- Stealth Rock
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
ROLE
Ttar sets up sand, rocks, and is an overall beast. It is the team’s special wall while providing a great physical presence to muscle past pokes like slowbro and reuniclus. A simple role, but it does it great. The EV spread is one I designed. HP is maximized while rounding down SR. Incredibly, the 8 Def EVs guarantee Ttar can survive an unboosted EQ from excadrill or garchomp at full health. The Spe EVs are an anti-meta move on my part. I didn’t want to give full investment as I needed a tanky set, so my priority was to outrun other bulky ttar since superpower + chople berry basically guaranteed me beating them. I figured most would maximize HP and Atk or something with the same EV adjustment for SR damage I had. So I calculated how many EVs that would leave for speed, and put one more than that in. I’m not sure if that specific number has come in handy, but I do know that my Ttar has outsped every other bulky tar I’ve seen. Finally, the rest of the EVs are dumped in SpD, with an adamant nature cause ttar’s base attack is so high and I wanted him to have definite offensive presence. Chople berry allows me to beat other ttar easily as well as proving invaluable for sponging random focus blasts, hp fightings, and mach punches. Ttar isn't the star player of the team, but boy is he consistent.
Garchomp @ leftovers
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Naive nature (+Spe, -SpD)
- Substitute
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
ROLE
One of the most powerful Pokémon in DW, Garchomp takes a bit more of a backseat role in this team, although it is an extremely vital one. With substitute and the prevalence of sub + SD chomp, this is an incredible lure for skarmory and other physical walls, which chomp quickly cripples with fire blast. Swords dance wasn’t needed as much because chomp is just meant to be taking out key defensive pokes on the enemy team, not sweeping through it himself. This isn’t to say he doesn’t get a fair share of the sweeping though. Dragon + fire + ground gives perfect coverage on literally everything and hits many pokes super-effective, meaning chomp destroys teams lacking a check to him. His best quality though is his ability to remove many of terrakion’s checks. I chose lefties cause he’s not really meant to be sweeping and I value his ability to come in repeatedly over a speed or power boost.
Deoxys @ life orb
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 Spa / 252 Spe
Naive nature (+Spe, -SpD)
- Psycho Boost
- Superpower
- Hidden Power [fire]
- Thunder(bolt) / ice beam
ROLE
Offensive deoxys-s is one of the most effective late-game cleaners or evene just sweepers out there. Furthermore, his ability to go mixed in a huge bonus for a team like this, since I end up getting hindered by classic skarmbliss cores. + speed is necessary to outspeed +1 garchomp, scarfgenesect, scarflandorus, and everything below them. Psyhco boost is a STAB attack and incredibly powerful with maximum SpA investment, while superpower compliments it nicely, both in terms of coverage and hitting on the physical side of the spectrum. Hidden power [fire] allows deoxys to OHKO genesect and scizor, two big threats, while denting ferrothorn a ton. I really have debated over the last slot—ice beam is fantastic for hitting garchomp and other dragons, but leaves deoxys unable to hit pokes like slowbro and chandelure for even neutral damage. Thunder(bolt) on the other hand offers coverage on these and also serves to make deoxys a fantastic tool against rain teams—making thunder a viable option over thunderbolt. I’m using ice beam at the moment, but might change this later on.
Slowbro @ leftovers
Trait: Regenerator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 40 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Psychic
- Flamethrower
- Toxic
ROLE
Slowbro is one of the most underrated Pokémon in DW IMO. With base 95 HP and base 110 Def, it shrugs off physical hits easily and hits tons of stuff for super-effective damage. Regenerator means slowbro doesn’t need a slot for a recovery move, letting it get great coverage. Finally, slowbro’s incredible defensive typing allows it to counter things like keldeo and blaziken before it was banned. Scald and psychic provide solid neutral coverage and give STAB, with scald hitting many SS pokes, like Ttar and excadrill, for supereffective damage. Psychic meanwhile is used for countering fighting-types like keldeo, conkeldurr, machamp, and even breloom if spore has been used. Finally, flamethrower is a great move to easily 2HKO ferrothorn and skarmory and OHKO predicted scizor and genesect switch-ins. Toxic is used to hit opposing tanks slowbro can’t do much against, and especially to get politoed and ninetales. While slowbro is probably not winning many MVP awards, he is about the most reliable poke in DW.
Genesect @ choice scarf
Trait: Download
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive (+Spe, -SpD)
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
ROLE
While overused, genesect is nothing if not effective. The choice scarf set is great for this team, as it is rather slow and genesect really helps mid-game with its immediate power. Calling him the glue would be too clichéd, and he really isn’t; he’s more like the duct tape used to patch up the weaknesses. Need a poke with an electric attack to hurt water types? Genesect. Need someone to finish off a weakened opponent and give me a switch of my choice? Genesect. Etc. Really such an effective and versatile Pokémon. Naïve is chosen since most attacks gene will take are priority, which are mostly physical, and so that opposing genesect get a SpA boost making it much safer to switch to Ttar to sponge a predicted elemental attack in case of an unpredicted u-turn.
Terrakion @ air balloon
Trait: Justified
EVs: 4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly (+Spe, -SpA)
- Rock Polish
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
ROLE
The STAR of the team. Although ridiculously popular in standard OU, terrakion for some reason is rarely seen in DW, and most of the time when it is it is as a scarfer. Seriously though, this set probably takes the place for best set in DW at the moment IMO. Double dancing is as always a potent strategy, functioning equally well against offensive teams as against stallish ones. Terrakion is even better at this due to the coverage provided by its STABs. However, the DW metagame is absolutely perfect for this set due to Terrakion’s incredible speed, sheer destructive power, and ability to smash through physical walls due to the coverage of its STABs. Furthermore, and this is perhaps the best thing about terrakion for me: he gets SOOO many opportunities to set up. Seriously. It sets up on excadrill. It sets up chandelure. It sets up on garchomp. It even sets up on genesect, perhaps the most versatile Pokémon in DW. +1 thunderbolt cant even 2HKO in sandstorm, giving terrakion time to rock polish, swords dance, and proceed to destroy literally every team lacking full-health skarmory, focus sash users, SE miss, ditto, breloom, or scarf deoxys (lol). And because of its incredible STAB coverage, it can even set up on and then bust through things like skarmory, as +2 CC does around 80% to even the most defensive version, compared to excadrill’s +2 rock slide managing 30%. Gliscor is 2HKOed by SE factoring in poison heal. Gensect is OHKOed at +0 after two SR switch ins. Seriously, calcs can not show how effective this set is. The MVP of the team almost every time, really only fails to shine against teams with lots of mach punch users.
For those who want to try it out:
Tyranitar (F) @ Chople Berry
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 232 HP / 8 Def / 240 SDef / 28 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Stealth Rock
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
Garchomp (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Substitute
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
Deoxys-S @ Life Orb
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Superpower
- Psycho Boost
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Ice Beam
Slowbro (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Regenerator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 40 SDef / 4 Spd
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Flamethrower
- Toxic
- Scald
- Psychic
Genesect @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Download
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
Terrakion @ Air Balloon
Trait: Justified
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Rock Polish
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 232 HP / 8 Def / 240 SDef / 28 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Stealth Rock
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Superpower
Garchomp (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Substitute
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
Deoxys-S @ Life Orb
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Superpower
- Psycho Boost
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Ice Beam
Slowbro (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Regenerator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 40 SDef / 4 Spd
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Flamethrower
- Toxic
- Scald
- Psychic
Genesect @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Download
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
Terrakion @ Air Balloon
Trait: Justified
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Rock Polish
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
