Project Mono-Type: Water

The biggest challenge in entering into the vastly deep metagame of competitive pokemon is the idea of team creation. Who's the best? Does the team mesh? Are there any glaring weaknesses to a team? How do you overcome the current top competitors? No matter if you are new to the competitive scene or a seasoned veteran, team creation is the crux of battling. My proposition for you today and singular goal of Project Mono-Type is to learn more about team construction.

The vast majority of players use the analyses to develop and construct their lines, as well they should. The analyses are tried and true staples and are designed to fit the metagame. But problems arise when players do not fully understand how to tweak their pokemon to suit the needs of the team.

I, myself, many times fall into the idea of recruiting by roll. I need a special sweeper, a physical sweeper, a couple decent walls/tanks, and hazards... so Just go through the list and pick pokemon to fill those rolls, trying to keep from leaving any really obvious weaknesses in the team. Then I play, I find out what's wrong, I alter the team, wash, rinse, repeat... I believe this style of team creation works, but team potential is only fully realized with a deeper understanding of the pokemon themselves and how they operate within a team.

As an analogy:
So we've gone from the metagame to team creation to individual pokemon... how do we learn more about pokemon so that we can maximize the effectiveness of our teams thus pushing the metagame into further evolution?

My answer: restriction.

Ever since my Gen 4 days on Shoddy Battle, I have kept a poison mono-type team. I am intimately familiar with the type and how to best utilize its strengths and overcome its weaknesses. Most of the pokemon on my poison line do not use standard sets. They can't. If they did, they wouldn't be able to make a cohesive team. Their individual standard rolls may still apply, but they don't have the benefit of being able to avoid their weaknesses with complementing types. Their options are limited, requiring me to think outside the box to make the team operable.

Here, then, is the proposition of Project Mono-Type: To learn how to tweak pokemon during team creation so that the team is cohesive in a way that can't be done by rigidly sticking to metagame staples. I plan to make a Standard OU competitive team with each of the 17 types. This is accomplished by:

1) Identifying a types main strengths and weaknesses;
2) Planning possible workarounds and implementing solutions based on current analyses, examining secondary types, move-pool options, stats, EV-spreads, and abilities; and
3) Play-testing line configurations, recording results and attempting to further the communities understanding of team creation.

What I need is input from the community. I am not the best nor most experienced player. And while I am very confident in my ability as a poison-type trainer, I am sure to need a lot of help with other types. Some types will be significantly harder to make a competitive team with than others and I need your expertise to make Project Mono-Type as beneficial for the community as possible.

I invite as many as are willing to participate in the exercise as possible. Through this thread I will keep updated results, links to each types' thread, and discussion on which types to attempt next.

As way of a disclaimer, I don't expect these lines to break top 100 or anything; but I do hope to create what can be considered a decently competitive line of each type, maximizing its potential within the standard OU ruleset.

Water Type Wrap-up

To wrap things up: Project Mono-Type was almost too successful! Creating a metagame-viable mono-water team proved extremely doable, with several options available in team creation. The large variety of pokemon within the water type and use of weather dominating tactics, multiple water teams were created that could carry their own.

Teams:

Run's team:

Texas Cloverleaf's team:

Dan Dan's team:

These successful teams all carried Politoed and Tentacruel. These two pokemon dominate the atmosphere of the game. Politoed controls weather and is tailored to remove otherwise difficult threats through the use of moves like Perish Song, Focus Blast, and Psychic. Tentacruel keeps Toxic Spikes down while using Rapid Spin to remove unwanted hazards. These two important pokemon set the stage and create the advantages the mono-water team needed to survive and have considerable bulk to boot.

Filling out the defensive core's were pokemon like Quagsire and Swampert, who have that ever-important electric immunity. Other Defensive options like Empoleon and Jellicent were also mixed in for their immunities and skill sets.

All the teams have a reliable, fast, physical sweeper in the form of DD Gyarados or Sharpedo. All these sweepers needed were the right opportunity to come in and begin. Once on a roll, these sweepers became extremely difficult to put a stop to with their constant stat boosting. These sweepers were integral to giving mono-water a fearsome offensive edge.

The final slots varied during testing and involved multiple play-styles and strategies. These Pokemon include: Vaporeon the Hydration Tank, Rotom-W for its electric neutrality and volt-switching, Ludicolo for grass neutrality and immunity to leech seed, and Starmie for high speed and offensive coverage.

By far, the hardest part of playing mono-water was avoiding super effective damage from the increasingly popular grass and electric types. There were several pokemon that were an issue for each of these teams, such as Ferrothorn, Verizion, Breloom, Celebi, Rotom-W, and many dragon-types. Each team had its methods for getting past each of these threats, often reliably. In the end, the water type is very capable of overcoming its weaknesses with forward-thinking and good team construction.

Take-Aways for YOUR Team:

So what is the take-away? How does this fit into your team construction today?

First and foremost, its easy to see the benefits of utilizing weather, in this case: rain. Weather gives your team the ability to hit harder and last longer, something every teams needs... mono-type or not. Moves like Aqua-Jet which are typically sub-par on the scale of usefulness of priority moves becomes a complete powerhouse in the rain being the only weather-boosted priority move. Rain also makes Rain Dish Tentacruel nigh-unkillable.

Second, Pokemon like SubBound Gayarados are great for overcoming their own weaknesses. Say you are worried about a Celebi or Breloom weakness on your team, but you don't want to add another EQ-weak fire pokemon or fire-weak bug or ice pokemon... SubBounce Gaya can fill the void both giving himself chance to setup by Subbing on an incoming thunder-wave or spore, then DD/Bounce to victory. Of course he may not be a hard-counter, but he may just keep your weaknesses at bay.

Another thing, I'm sure everybody knows already, is that using a Water/Ground pokemon like Swampert, Quagsire, or Gastrodon in your defensive core is a great way to add a bulky water with an electric (and sometimes water) immunity.

These are, of course, very limited examples and are in no way revolutionary (or even new) to the way you build your teams... These are just small things to keep in mind during team construction that may have been outside your scope before.

Electric
Issues: Walled by Chansey/Blissey/Lanturn/Gastrodon etc, mostly special attackers, weak to Ground.
Solutions: Use Coil Eelektross, Meditate Electivire, use HP Grass and HP Ice on 2 pokemon each, use Eelektross and Zapdos as Ground immunities. HP Grass Raikou can clean pretty well once the main special walls/ground type scarfers are gone.

Electric is a decent type but suffers from a lot of power loss, it doesn't have great sweep options aside from Raikou and can't really stall. You pretty much are required to use Raikou, Zapdos, Rotom-W, (physical attacker/scout), Eelektross, filler to succeed.

I tried to do something like this, making a mono-type team for every type, but unfortunately I don't really have enough knowledge to make them truly competitively viable. Plus they were made when Thundurus and Excadrill were still at large so would need a massive rehaul.

Good luck with this though, hopefully you can come up with some effective teams for each type.

Fighting

Issues: Mostly physical attackers (thus mostly walled by Skarmory), can have difficulty dealing with fast Ghosts like Gengar which can disable coverage moves, decimated by fast Psychic and Flying types (eg Azelf, Deoxys-S with Psycho Boost, Tornadus) and Reuniclus!

Solutions: Use Nasty Plot Lucario / Toxicroak for diversity, Scrafty can take down troublesome Psychic types as well as Gengar with a DD Moxie set (or possibly Chople to ensure that Scrafty can take a Focus Blast from Reuniclus) Mixed Infernape can break through Skarmory easily. U-Turners like Mienshao and Infernape also threaten Psychic types.

Fighting is probably a good option, with Scrafty being an absolute staple for his ability to beat Psychic types (just look at the monotype stats). Terrakion is also useful since it can hit flying types hard and take their attacks in a pinch. It has a lot of powerful attackers, excellent offensive STAB, decent resistances and not a lot of exploitable weaknesses. It lacks support options, although Gallade can be useful if you want access to Heal Bell, Will o Wisp, Thunder Wave etc.

If I were to make a mono-Fighting team, it'd probably be something like Mienshao / Infernape / Terrakion / Lucario / Scrafty / Gallade.

I think the reason Poison shines so much as a Mono type is because Poison is rarely seen as a primary type for which you pick a mon. Examples being Gengar (used as a ghost type primarily), Drapion (pursuiter/phazer), and less-so Tentacruel (absorbs tspikes, sets them and resists fire > covers grass/poisons well), which gives much more variety to work with in your team. You also have lots of potential hazard layers, and (p)hazers of the poison type and of course you're immune to Toxic! These are the sorts of things you need to look into when building a mono team

Steel

Strengths:
Resists 11 of the 17 types
Type weaknesses can be gotten around easily
Has some of the best and most versatile Pokemon in the game (Ferrothorn, Excadrill and Scizor, for example)
Do not take sandstorm damage
Immune to poison

Weaknesses:
Weak to some of the most common attacking types in the metagame
Trapped by Magnet Pull
Most Pokemon of the type are slow

I can see steel mono-type being the most commonly used because of the aforementioned aspects. Steel is the only type that resists dragon, so only steel mono-type teams would prevent dragons from running rampant. Its plethora of resistances makes switching in easier and Pokemon like Heatran and Skarmory don't even fear some of the weaknesses of their fellow steel type Pokemon. All in all, steel is an amazing typing and a mono-type team could be competitively viable.

Psychic

Issues:
It's hard to overcome the type disadvantages vs Tyranitar or Scizor. No viable U-turn switch-ins, while most members welcome Scizor to waltz in. Physically frail in General. Shitty STAB moves, and you'll 100% rely on your secondary STAB, guaranteed.

Solution: Use Psychic + Steel types to make those Crunches and U-turns a neutral hit. Jirachi, Bronzong, Metagross, etc. are pretty darn bulky and can take physical hits for the team.

Psychic is surprisingly viable in OU, but in a rather formulaic manner. Really, it's more of a Dragon + Steel team (ei. Latias, Latios, Jirachi, Bronzong) than a Psychic-type team. Also, there's a lot of Psychic-type legendaries, so that's a really nice thing I guess because they have high-BST mons. Bronzong can act as Ttar counter, carry bunch of Fire-type moves to catch Scizor by surprise. WoW Mew can land a fast burn, and can handle Tar + Scizor given that Mew has comfortable HP. We all know that Dragon + Steel are really good combination defensively, especially if you've played any Latias-stage DPP OU.

If I were to recommend a monotype team to fare well vs standard OU, I'd go with Latias / Latios / Jirachi / Bronzong / Mew / Deo-S, with top-tier other options being Reuniclus, Espeon, Celebi, and Starmie.

I'm seeing a lot of good stuff on these types. Can we focus on determining what might be a good type to make a competitive line with first? It might be better to start easy while we are all getting the hang of this, then we can move discussion to a thread dedicated to that type.

Does anyone have any suggestions for the overall operation of how the project should run? Is anyone interested in heading the research on a type or two at some point?

Dan Dan said:

I think the reason Poison shines so much as a Mono type is because Poison is rarely seen as a primary type for which you pick a mon. Examples being Gengar (used as a ghost type primarily), Drapion (pursuiter/phazer), and less-so Tentacruel (absorbs tspikes, sets them and resists fire > covers grass/poisons well), which gives much more variety to work with in your team. You also have lots of potential hazard layers, and (p)hazers of the poison type and of course you're immune to Toxic! These are the sorts of things you need to look into when building a mono team

Click to expand...

Excellent points. Poison is one of the better types for mono-teams IMO. Although I will say that I thought hazards would be a major part of my teams until I actually started playing. While I do like to get toxic spikes down, the frailty of most hazard users in the poison type makes it difficult to get spikes/SR up reliably, and being down 1-2 pokemon for the sake of hazards is not something a mono-poison team can afford. Poison can't run stall, therefore really cutting the risk/reward for hazards in general. Longevity is not something that will come easy to any mono-type team, I imagine.

In terms of types to start out with to work with, immediately Water, Ground, Rock and Fire are primary candidates because they have weather for which we know works well in the Overused tier, and to make a mono-type team for these will be comparatively easier to construct as it always can utilise a proven strategy.

I’ve primarily kept a team of fire types on most versions since mid-third generation, so I’d hope I’ve got some useful stuff regarding the type and its OU material...

Fire
Strengths:
· Is a very good offensive typing and has a reasonable, if selective pool of pokemon to choose from. Both sides of the spectrum have key offensive figures and there are some mixed attackers to choose from also.
· Is aided by the ability Drought which it has access to using, which boosts fire-type moves and weakens Water type moves, a key weakness of the type.
· Many fire types are able to utilise moves to counter their weaknesses.
· Can also use a number of secondary types on many Pokemon that aid in further ability to counter teams.

Weaknesses:
· Types that fire pokemon are weak to are highly prevalent in the overused tier, especially as they can also utilise weather related abilities in order to function efficiently. Rain and Sand teams are commonly seen in this generation’s overused environment
· Have very few defensive options from which to choose from. The majority of the pokemon that are fire types also have sub-par defensive stats, and many are not geared for use as supporters, although some can be tailored to suit the needs of a team.
· Hugely influenced by Stealth Rock, and by extension no real obvious spinners for which to deal with the problem once on the field.
· Not many options to combat Dragon types.

In terms of team, immediately Ninetales is an absolute must in order to fully maximise the strengths that the fire types have in the sun with Drought, which makes any STAB attack immediately a very potent force and all subsequent Pokemon will have access to a physical or special fire move of choice. Infernape makes for a good late-game sweeper, and can do both sides of the offensive spectrum and can go mixed. Sweepers such as Chandelure and Volcarona from the special side, and Darmanitan on the physical are good choices having excellent base stats in their attack or special attack. However, Darmanitan and Chandelure especially are dangerous to use because of the sub-par speed stats that make them vulnerable to revenge killing

Defensively however, there are comparatively fewer options available. Heatran is almost certainly a certainty because it has proven walling capabilities and is also very effective in attacking from the special side, and also walls any stray users of Toxic. Apart from Heatran, the only other main bulky/defensive Pokemon is Rotom-H. Having levitate is a god-send given that Ground moves would cripple it and the team, and this brings in another key immunity that it can exploit to safely switch in to.

Other options at disposal are Victini and Houndoom, the former is balanced and can run a boatload of roles, whilst Houndoom is an alternative special sweeper (having a psychic immunity notably), depending on preferences that each person may have.

Flying:

Advantages:
- Extremely diverse secondary-types to choose from compared to most other types
- Amazing Offense & Defense choices
- Includes Gliscor, The Genies, Skarmory, Staraptor, Dragonite, Salamence, Zapdos, Gyarados, & Xatu
- Immunity to Spikes & Toxic Spikes
- Resistant to Fighting-type attacks & immunity to Ground

Disadvantages:
- Stealth Rock weakness
- Hit hard by common Rock, Electric, & Ice attacks
- Generally average speeds overall
- STAB Flying has good coverage but often out-classed by secondary STAB

In OU, Flying is more often than not a disadvantage for most Pokemon, but so many great Pokemon have it in Mono-type that it allows you to create very diverse teams that other types just can't do. There are not many good Special Walls outside of Zapdos in the Flying-type family so overall it's a bit weak on the Special side but it has Skarmory & Gliscor which can make it a very Physically bulky mono-type.

Wyrms Eye said:

In terms of types to start out with to work with, immediately Water, Ground, Rock and Fire are primary candidates because they have weather for which we know works well in the Overused tier, and to make a mono-type team for these will be comparatively easier to construct as it always can utilise a proven strategy.

Click to expand...

I think you're right. Weather is a big deal for obvious reasons so choosing a type with weather control will be an easy way to start. For auto-weather, we have these types to choose from

Fire - Ninetails
Water - Politoed
Ground - Hippodon
Rock - Tyranitar
Dark - Tyranitar
Ice - Abomasnow
Grass - Abomasnow

I think that's a good starting criteria for our first type. Can we get some votes on those types? Please include your reason why you think the type you vote for will make a good mono-type team.

I'm really liking the input im getting from the community thus far. Keep posting!

I don't think Fire would be a very good monotype in the standard OU metagame. Shut down by Politoed / Tyranitar unless you run Ninetales, everything apart from Heatran and Infernape is weak to Stealth Rock, few support options.

On that note, I also don't think Ice would be a very good monotype since the typing's shit defensively and most users of Ice moves often don't need STAB on them. Unless you had something like a hyper-offense team with Rapid Spin Cryogonal or Cloyster (or Delibird!) I just don't see it working at all. Not to mention SpD Heatran > Ice types

As stated above, I think Fighting's the way to go. At least for offense :P For auto-weather, I guess Water would be the best type. Even with Sun up, Fire is hard pressed to beat it, Tyranitar won't like taking repeated special hits (and dies easily to Gyarados anyways) and there are ways of getting around Abomasnow. Plus Swampert gets Stealth Rock. :3

Vote: Water

GtM: what type would you suggest (sticking to the auto-weather criteria)?

Ninetales is definitely an absolute must, then

Also, don't forget that Abomasnow is part grass-type

MaestroXXVI said:

Also, don't forget that Abomasnow is part grass-type

Click to expand...

Thx. Updated.

GtM said:

I don't think Fire would be a very good monotype in the standard OU metagame. Shut down by Politoed / Tyranitar unless you run Ninetales, everything apart from Heatran and Infernape is weak to Stealth Rock, few support options.

Click to expand...

I agree in principle that Fire is not the first type that one would think of monotyping in OU. However, there is enough fire Pokemon around that each can (and often do) carry attacks that allow it to deal with key threats such as those you have named. A monotype team would behave very differently from a regular team setup, and in theory sets are likely to deviate from the norm far more in order to counter that which it is primarily at risk to, whilst still functioning in an effective manner in the tier of choice.

Stealth Rock is definitely where the fire monotype will have a serious achilles heel though, and I readily admit that. It's one of the things that makes this type much less desirable. I actually had to search to find that there is one fire type Pokemon that can actually use Rapid Spin. Unfortunately, it just so happens to be Torkoal, so it's unlikely to be of any use.

And again, fire Pokemon are not built to support. However, I do believe that some of them do have some support options open to them, it's just they are barely used because a fire type is generally designed to hit hard and fast and very few Pokemon that deviate from that formula in this type fare very well at all. It would be interesting to see how effective trying to build a supporter-esque fire Pokemon would work in principle.

Oh, and before I forget, vote for fire.

Fire gets assraped by Rock (which would carry SR) and unless you want to run Torkoal... *shudders*

Yeah. Water.

I've done this before. Fire is the worst one by far. Good luck with that one <_< The best are Water, Flying, Poison, Dragon, Steel. Probably in that order, even.

I actually built a Mono Water team a while back using rain and it did quite well.

Ground is fantastic IMO.

Hippowdon provides weather for Landorus as well as functioning as an awesome wall, Stealth Rocker, and phazer with Roar or Yawn. Landorus and the famous Gliscor are top metagame threats already, and provide Ground immunities and Grass neutralities. Gastrodon has the all-important Water immunity and Ice neutrality as well as the ability to fight back with Special moves or CounterCoat a sweeper. Golurk's prized immunities are less important here, but his ability to smash defensive Psychics and slower Ghosts that pose trouble for the rest of the team is useful. Claydol has Rapid Spin, good bulk, and a varied movepool, and Flygon's Dragon STAB is slightly more potent with Steels being afraid from the start. Mamoswine can be used with Thick Fat for an Ice resist if you don't need Ice Shard. Nidoking is a dangerous Special attacker who can choose between Life Orb or Scarf, and Steelix, although difficult to use in 5th Gen, provides a Dragon resistance, phazing, and Sturdy Stealth Rock.

Mono-Water is probably the most viable though.

If you're going to build a Mono-Water team, then you'll have to be aware of this: NP Celebi will completely and totally rape through the whole team. For electrics, you get (mostly) Gastrodon, or possibly Quaggy or Swampy, but you really don't get a chance to cover your Grass-type weakness unless you run something vastly inferior like Sap Sipper Azumarill (eww).

I don't know about y'all, but if you're gonna build a Mono-Water team, most likely it's going to be bulky offense or rain stall. For a Hyper-offensive team, it's OK to not cover some Pokemon specifically knowing that you can overwhelm it with offenses at the right time. For a bulky team, completely ignoring a threat like that is unacceptable.

For the voting, I choose Ground. Dark-types suck other than Tyranitar and Hydreigon (I might be missing something but don't flame. You know good Dark-types are rare). Fire-types mean SR weak team, and Grass types don't have a way to abuse Hail, other than Aboma himself. Also, all-Ice Hail teams suck as we all know. That means those 4 types are automatically removed. That leaves Ground, Rock, and Water. As I said above, I think that a mono-Water team will be just a worse version of rain stall that is 6-0'd by Celebi or a worse version of rain offense that has no access to things like Tornadus, so I'll skip on that. That leaves Rock and Ground. Rock kinda sounds interesting with stuff like Storm Drain Cradily, but again mono-Rock would be insanely weak to Fighters, and they're all slow as hell; I'm repeating myself a lot, but slow & bulky teams can't have a gaping weakness like that. Ground has Gastrodon to cover Water / Ice attacks, and Flygon to U-turn on Celebi.

stealth rock weak types without a viable rapid spinner suck pretty hard. (flying can use magic bounce xatu i guess) so using one of those first isnt a great idea

Water is easily the best, I had an all water team with one wild card make it up to 1450 in gen 4. Swampert+gyarados covers all your weaknesses and you can fill in the rest with pretty much whatever you want. you have to carry a specific ferrothorn counter though. if only keldeo was out.

If you're looking for the easiest type to start out with, Water is almost inarguably the best choice, especially out of the list presented.

Water has:

• The most fully evolved Pokemon of any type
• At least one of every secondary typing possible, usable in OU (excepting Water/Fire. . . Water/Bug technically only has Surskit)
• An abusable weather in rain, which can come in the form of drizzle or rain dance
• A variety of types of Pokemon; sweepers, walls, tanks, etc.
• Inherent type advantages against the other two primary weathers (even without rain of your own)
• Excellent typing both defensively and offensively
• A plethora of usable STAB attacks, including priority Aqua Jet

As for obvious downsides to Water, there are none that set it apart from other mono-type teams:

• Arguments such as "Water loses to X sweeper every time!" can be applied to almost every single type, and losing to Celebi is not as serious a problem, as, say, Dragonite, Scizor, or Terrakion.
• Water is not weak to Stealth Rock.
• Water has a Pokemon for every role, so you're not restricted to a certain playstyle (ie, Fire would likely have a hard time stalling)

Would Water be the best monotype team? That's an entirely different question, and it is not what I am trying to claim. I'm simply stating that Water will be the easiest for which to make a usable, competitively viable team, especially on a first attempt. It will not take outlandishly creative movesets or unique, severely underused Pokemon to be successful. I'm not trying to discourage these things, simply stating that, again, they would make this effort more difficult.