Hail Yea!!!

Introduction

Don't get confused, this is a 5th gen team. As some of my friends may know that I don't like to always use top tier teams because they get repetitive. This team started out for fun but I wanted to see if I could brake the meta with a hail team. Most hail teams are stall oriented however I don't enjoy full stall all that much. So I decided to base it around semi-stall since I think full stall is less likely to work out in a meta game so offensive. It surprisingly did great, I laddered up quickly closing into the top 30. So I'd thought I post this because I love hail teams and plan to edit it as I continue play testing.

Abomasnow @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Snow Warning
EVs: 16 Atk / 252 SAtk / 240 Spd
Hasty Nature (+Spd, -Def)
- Blizzard
- Wood Hammer
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Predictable lead but probably the safest. My opponents tend to send in their answer for Abomasnow first turn, which I can outspeed and KO. Rotom-W is a bit problematic for the team so Abomasnow is the answer to that. Other than that, this guy hits like a truck with 100% accurate Blizzard. I can catch Scizors on the switch with Hidden Power Fire and hit fire types with Earthquake. The scarf lets me outspeed Thundurus and put an end to Exacdrill with ease. Oh and dragon based teams? Lol no problem.

Starmie @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
- Recover
- Rapid Spin

Starmie's main duty is to get hazards off the field so Abomasnow can come in often. There are no good spin blockers being used anymore so Starmie's job is all too easy. Rain and sand teams have a hard time with it since she is so fast, packing STAB Hydro Pump and a strong Thunderbolt in her arsenal. Recover is must to keep her in the game since I don't need much grass and dragon coverage.

Heatran @ Passho Berry
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 128 HP / 216 SAtk / 164 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Roar
- Dragon Pulse

I never was too sure about the previous set but I'm satisfied with my current one now. I used to have a special defensive Heatran, worked out well but didn't help much against my main threats. Rotom-W terrorizes this whole team with is great duel STAB coverage and typing. The Passho Berry will reduce Hydro Pump's damage to 49.86% - 58.59% from the standard Rotom-W. With good prediction I should be able to easily take it out. Not only does this work great against Rotom-W but also against Politoeds, removing their weather inducer. This set also allows me to check Latios, another huge threat to this team. Roar is needed to phaze out Volcarona, I can't afford to let it get a free set up.

Gengar @ Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Shadow Ball
- Focus Blast
- Substitute
- Pain Split

Every team with hazards needs a spin blocker. SubSplit Gengar is much more than that though, it's a floating powerhouse just waiting to sweep at any given time. People seem to be forgetting how effective this set is, especially against Blissey. With all the entry hazards its very hard for anything to switch in. The hazards allow Gengars attacks get the extra push it needs. Pain Split gives you enough recovery to keep you from getting stalled out if it comes down to it. I don't know why people use SubDisable more than this, it has much more sweeping potential.

Skarmory @ Leftovers
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SDef
Impish Nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Brave Bird
- Spikes
- Whirlwind
- Roost

Specially Defensive Skarmory can take hits from both sides of the spectrum. Skarm loves setting up on sand teams all day and bulky waters. Dragons will get phazed out before they become too powerful and fast. Then scarf Abomasnow can sweep them later and the rest of the team thanks to all the hazards. I just have to watch out for Magnezones. However, a team utilizing a Magnezone most likely has the disadvantage.

Swampert @ Leftovers
Trait: Torrent
EVs: 240 HP / 216 Def / 52 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Earthquake
- Blizzard
- Roar
- Stealth Rock

I know I'm going to get a lot of Swampert hate but I'll explain why I chose this over Gastrodon. Besides the fact I just dispise all Gastrodon because it completely walls my favorite poke, I just thought Swampert fits the role better to take on Tyranitar. Other than that Swampert does help out with its useful bulk and synergy with Heatran and Skarmory. I'm trying out Blizzard for now and it hits hard. I do rage when my hail is gone and I miss Blizzard at the wrong time. He can troll Thundurus and shuffles like a pro.
---------

Threat List:

Dugtrio - If this thing catches Heatran while I'm playing a sun user, I will be very sad. Sun abusers will become hard to deal with and could sweep easily.

Hydreigon - The game gets situational when he comes in. Technically nothing on my team can safely switch into it. I usually try to get by with predicting on the choiced sets. Other than that, I can only revenge kill it. Luckly these aren't very common.

Latios - It just hits way too hard for my team not to fear it. My initial switch is usually Skarmory to scout what set it is. Heatran is my only hope to take it down without losing a member. A Specs Surf only does 41.69% - 49.3% to Heatran with the Passho Berry. Heatran can hit back with a Dragon Pulse doing 76.49% - 88.41% after Stealth Rock damage. So Latios cannot switch directly into Heatran. Abomasnow can Revenge it easily.

Reuniclus - Nothing on my team will give it a free set up but this thing could potentially set up Calm Minds and I won't be able to take it down. My only hope is to phaze it out, have a one-on-one match with Gengar, or attempt to 2HKO it with something already out. Trick Room Reuniclus isn't a big deal, Skarmory can Roost stall it out of Focus Blast and I can start poking for damage.

Rotom-W - Yea Abomasnow can wall this guy all day but with potential rocks on the field and the ability to Volt Switch, I won't be in a good postion all the time. On top of that this team is weak to the very uncommon Hidden Power Fire. Thank god people are hardly ever running that move anymore because Gastrodon and Dragons are much more important to hit. I will have to let Heatran lure it out and 2HKO with Hidden Power Grass while Passho Berry saves Heatran from Hydro Pump.

Scizor - He may not seem like much of threat but the very uncommon offensive Scizor with max speed could rip holes in this team. Heatran can normally outspeed Scizors but sometimes I happen to fight ones that run speed which is why I switched from the special defensive set. Unless it's Jolly its not getting past Heatran, otherwise I'll just have Skarmory or Starmie deal with it.

Virizion - This things typing, defensive bulk, and coverage is a huge threat to this team. It all comes down to me risking Gengar or Skarmory just to take it down.

you should fit toxic spikes in somewhere as this is a stallish team. maybe try a drapion (lol) or forretress over skarmory that might do you better. gl

I suggest you to change two items: choice scarf of Abomasnow and leftovers of Heatran.
Change the first with focus sahs and the second with air balloon.
With Choice scarf Abomasnow is faster but is also too vulnerable, for example with a choise scarf Blaziken, an Heatran with Air balloon or with a Choise scarf Jirachi with fire punch. Focus sash gives you the possibility to attack and it's a very good item for a lead like abomasnow, then replace HP with Ice shard and put some more evs in attack. (the speed is Spe, you risk to confuse it with special defense SpD).
Air balloon gives Heatran the possibility to switch in an earthquake, for this reason, change roar with HP ice to hit Ground and Dragon types very well and with HP the genies are not a problem; change roar and not WoW because you have Skarmory with whirlwind.
Swampert is a good pkmn but i propose to change leftovers with rindo berry and ice beam with ice punch.
Good Luck!

Congratulations on using Swampert over Gastrodon! He's a good fit on hail teams since Abomasnow is already a decent check to many rain team attackers, and the extra Defense is very helpful in dealing with incoming Rock attacks. Furthermore, Stealth Rock + Roar are key reasons to use Swampert over Gastrodon, and you're exploiting them to the max with your given setup. You could also use Blizzard on Swampert over Ice Beam if you wanted, but it's up to you.

On the other hand, are three phasers really necessary on your team? You could remove Roar on Heatran for Substitute, which would let you deal with other Heatran more effectively and lets you stack up residual damage with your attacks as opponents try to break your Subs.

Also, to the above, replacing Leftovers with Rindo Berry would be a poor move since Swampert would then be losing health every turn thanks to Hail, and would not be able to tank as many attacks. Furthermore, if you want to tank a Grass attack, just switch to Abomasnow or Heatran.

I can't help but see that this isn't a hail team. This is a team which has abomasnow as a member. What i mean is that there's practically nobody apart from Abomasnow benefitting from this, while kindof hurting everyone else. For that reason i suggest changing this team to a normal OU team but changing Aboma to a strong Ice-Type pokemon, as that's practically the only thing it's doing, or change him to a Grass-type poke, whatever you need most.

The point of Abomasnow is not to give boosts to any other members but to counter opposing weather as Hail is the least used.

Also post by Braseg257 made me lol.

Okay time to try and help.

For a start I will say what you're expecting, Swampert should be replaced. It is a solid Pokemon but in the current OU meta game it isn't as useful as other Pokemon such as Gastrodon. Gastrodon can resist both Electric and Water moves while firing off the same type attacks as Swampert while maybe getting a Sp.atk boost. SR can be put onto Heatran I'm sure since you mentioned Gastrodon you don't need me to recommend a set.

I hope this helped, good luck!

This is a pretty solid team man, although I highly suggest you expand this RMT with more commentary and maybe a treat list so you can get less of "switch Swampert / Abomasnow" comments.

Never the less, it still has a few problems. Probably the biggest threats are Latios, and Trick Room Reunicles. Latios, in theory, you can play around with, but trick room Reunicles outright sweeps you. Also, the more uncommon, calm mind Virizion could be a massive headache.

Probably the best pokemon to deal with these threats is Scizor. A specially defensive scizor can beat down said pokemon, and provide excellent priority to beat other pokemon such are Terrakion, if Skarmory should go down.

Bug bite > Super power, as you would be using this for Reunicles and Virizion. The only other option here would be leftovers over life orb perhaps, I suggest you test both out to see which goes better. Probably the best pokemon to switch this with would be Gengar, as Gengar's purpose seems to be lost here; Starmie is also an option over Scizor, but losing a Thundurus check is not advisable.

As far as the rest of the team goes, it all seems fine. Although I would suggest a more physically bulky Skarmory, and perhaps more special defense evs on Swampert, but that's just preference.

Aeromence said:

you should fit toxic spikes in somewhere as this is a stallish team. maybe try a drapion (lol) or forretress over skarmory that might do you better. gl

Click to expand...

I haven't found the need to use Toxic Spikes. If it was full stall sure! However I'm just trying to put big dents in teams and sweep them easily. For this reason, Toxic Spikes won't always work because they can easily go away without even having a spinner.

Braseg257 said:

I suggest you to change two items: choice scarf of Abomasnow and leftovers of Heatran.
Change the first with focus sahs and the second with air balloon.
With Choice scarf Abomasnow is faster but is also too vulnerable, for example with a choise scarf Blaziken, an Heatran with Air balloon or with a Choise scarf Jirachi with fire punch. Focus sash gives you the possibility to attack and it's a very good item for a lead like abomasnow, then replace HP with Ice shard and put some more evs in attack. (the speed is Spe, you risk to confuse it with special defense SpD).
Air balloon gives Heatran the possibility to switch in an earthquake, for this reason, change roar with HP ice to hit Ground and Dragon types very well and with HP the genies are not a problem; change roar and not WoW because you have Skarmory with whirlwind.
Swampert is a good pkmn but i propose to change leftovers with rindo berry and ice beam with ice punch.
Good Luck!

Click to expand...

Ummm, Blaizken is banned, Balloon Heatran is a useless item on this team because I want him to take hits for things other than ground moves. And he will be die quicker without leftovers. Skarm handles the dragons very well already. Rindo berry on pert? Thats kinda useless here and he will slowly fade like Heatran if I did that.

GtM said:

Congratulations on using Swampert over Gastrodon! He's a good fit on hail teams since Abomasnow is already a decent check to many rain team attackers, and the extra Defense is very helpful in dealing with incoming Rock attacks. Furthermore, Stealth Rock + Roar are key reasons to use Swampert over Gastrodon, and you're exploiting them to the max with your given setup. You could also use Blizzard on Swampert over Ice Beam if you wanted, but it's up to you.

On the other hand, are three phasers really necessary on your team? You could remove Roar on Heatran for Substitute, which would let you deal with other Heatran more effectively and lets you stack up residual damage with your attacks as opponents try to break your Subs.

Also, to the above, replacing Leftovers with Rindo Berry would be a poor move since Swampert would then be losing health every turn thanks to Hail, and would not be able to tank as many attacks. Furthermore, if you want to tank a Grass attack, just switch to Abomasnow or Heatran.

Click to expand...

Oh yea I could use Blizzard I completely forgot! I'll see how consistant it is in more test. The three phazers wasn't intentional but I had room for the moves and they are good at phazing against favorable match ups. Heatran needs Roar so Volcarona doesn't have free set up however.

Captain Dragan said:

I can't help but see that this isn't a hail team. This is a team which has abomasnow as a member. What i mean is that there's practically nobody apart from Abomasnow benefitting from this, while kindof hurting everyone else. For that reason i suggest changing this team to a normal OU team but changing Aboma to a strong Ice-Type pokemon, as that's practically the only thing it's doing, or change him to a Grass-type poke, whatever you need most.

Click to expand...

Abusers don't make a hail team. In fact, the most successful hail teams I've seen don't have abusers. Ice is a very fragile type, you need many resistances to keep a team in working order. To my knowledge, aside from Blizzard you can't really "abuse" hail. It's doesn't boost speed or power like the other weathers. It just does damage to everything since people don't run ice types which i find very effective. The only good abuser worth mentioning is StallRein and all it takes is to change the weather to negate it's effectiveness.

Jaxx said:

The point of Abomasnow is not to give boosts to any other members but to counter opposing weather as Hail is the least used.

Also post by Braseg257 made me lol.

Okay time to try and help.

For a start I will say what you're expecting, Swampert should be replaced. It is a solid Pokemon but in the current OU meta game it isn't as useful as other Pokemon such as Gastrodon. Gastrodon can resist both Electric and Water moves while firing off the same type attacks as Swampert while maybe getting a Sp.atk boost. SR can be put onto Heatran I'm sure since you mentioned Gastrodon you don't need me to recommend a set.

I hope this helped, good luck!

Click to expand...

The water coverage is fine I just hate switching into Rotom-W on potential rocks and Volt Switch. If I had to include Gastrodon, I would change Heatrans set to this. Will-O-Wisp will allow me to tank Tyranitar's Superpowers better and set up rocks. However HP Grass is needed to hit Rotom-W, so ill see how it goes.

Heatran @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SAtk / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Lava Plume/Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Grass]/Will-O-Wisp
- Roar
- Stealth Rock

Click to expand...

Hey, nice team! We don't get to see a team like this everyday on the RMT forum, so you all should appreciate it.

The one thing that bothers me about this team is that there really is no good fighting resist. Gengar is immune, but switching into things like Terakion and even Conkeldurr is risky. The fact that Skarmory and Swampert don't get leftovers recovery doesn't help this at all. Also, DD Gyarados could sweep this team if you give it a set up opportunity.

Since Gengar and Starmie pretty much cover the same things, why not try a sturdier Starmie?

Starmie @ Leftovers Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Thunderbolt
- Rapid Spin
- Recover

This Starmie actually beats those Specially Defensive Tyranitar that lack Crunch (unboosted Pursuit does 27.8% - 33.3%), and gives you a 100% Gyarados counter. It also almost never gets 2HKO'd by Choice Band Terrakion's Close Combat, and has a good chance to live Jolly Landorus's +2 EQ after SR (despite probably dieing to hail afterwards). If you truly miss being able to outspeed things like Landorus, Infernape and Terakion, then use 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe.

One last thing; switch Skarmory's nature to Impish. It's your only real Excadrill switch in, and you want it to be able to withstand flinches and whatnot. Plus, it's just far more efficient considering Skarmory's physical defense stat is twice as large as its special defense stat.

Good luck!

Scarfwynaut said:

Never the less, it still has a few problems. Probably the biggest threats are Latios, and Trick Room Reunicles. Latios, in theory, you can play around with, but trick room Reunicles outright sweeps you. Also, the more uncommon, calm mind Virizion could be a massive headache.

Probably the best pokemon to deal with these threats is Scizor. A specially defensive scizor can beat down said pokemon, and provide excellent priority to beat other pokemon such are Terrakion, if Skarmory should go down.

Specially Bulky Scizor

Scizor (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Atk / 216 SDef
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Roost

Bug bite > Super power, as you would be using this for Reunicles and Virizion. The only other option here would be leftovers over life orb perhaps, I suggest you test both out to see which goes better. Probably the best pokemon to switch this with would be Gengar, as Gengar's purpose seems to be lost here; Starmie is also an option over Scizor, but losing a Thundurus check is not advisable.

As far as the rest of the team goes, it all seems fine. Although I would suggest a more physically bulky Skarmory, and perhaps more special defense evs on Swampert, but that's just preference.

Click to expand...

Heatran and Skarm usually takes Latios's abuse just fine as long as i stay away from the super effective stuff but yea it sucks if I predict wrong. When it comes down to Trick Room Reuniclus, hopefully Skarm is still alive so I can just Roost stall it. CM Reuniclus is probably scarier since It'll be harder to kill. If I can fix the team up and find a place for Scizor or another counter I would, it's really hard to find room for the important stuff and extra stuff...I'll have to do some calcs to see what spread for Swampert I like.

Super Mario Bro said:

Hey, nice team! We don't get to see a team like this everyday on the RMT forum, so you all should appreciate it.

The one thing that bothers me about this team is that there really is no good fighting resist. Gengar is immune, but switching into things like Terakion and even Conkeldurr is risky. The fact that Skarmory and Swampert don't get leftovers recovery doesn't help this at all. Also, DD Gyarados could sweep this team if you give it a set up opportunity.

Since Gengar and Starmie pretty much cover the same things, why not try a sturdier Starmie?

Starmie @ Leftovers Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Thunderbolt
- Rapid Spin
- Recover

This Starmie actually beats those Specially Defensive Tyranitar that lack Crunch (unboosted Pursuit does 27.8% - 33.3%), and gives you a 100% Gyarados counter. It also almost never gets 2HKO'd by Choice Band Terrakion's Close Combat, and has a good chance to live Jolly Landorus's +2 EQ after SR (despite probably dieing to hail afterwards). If you truly miss being able to outspeed things like Landorus, Infernape and Terakion, then use 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe.

One last thing; switch Skarmory's nature to Impish. It's your only real Excadrill switch in, and you want it to be able to withstand flinches and whatnot. Plus, it's just far more efficient considering Skarmory's physical defense stat is twice as large as its special defense stat.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Thanks ^^
Impish Skarmory sounds just fine. The bulky Starmie can be situational...I'll have to see how that plays out most of the time. Thanks for the rate, I'll be testing out a bulkier Starmie.

Recent changes:
-Added small threat list
-Replaced Ice Beam w/ Blizzard on Swampert
-Changed nature of Skarmory from Careful to Impish
-Changed Heatrans set