In which I fail to come up with a good title (misc. goodstuff)

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
The Team

I was originally trying to make a Spinda + Role Play Latias team, but decided to scrap the gimmick and turn it into a legitimate team. With no need for Role Play, I swapped Latias for her more attractive brother.

Spinda was no longer around making things complicated, so Latios brought in one of his best friends, Infernape.

Now that my core pair was set up, I figured I'd look for something cool. And what is the coolest Pokémon? Regice, of course.

At this point, I started to take things more seriously. I realized that my team would have some issues dealing with fast opponents, so I brought back the star of my VGC11 team.

At the other end of the speed spectrum, Trick Room teams were trolling me hard, especially Cresselia. So I added something to really bug her, and then a partner to keep the fire away.

After some more testing, I decided that neither Regice nor Tornadus were really pulling their weight - I rarely found use for Tailwind, and despite having awesome coverage, Regice's attacks just didn't hit hard enough to justify its defensive issues. So I dropped both of them. After falling ill to a nasty case of Spore in one of my battles, I was inspired to try out Breloom instead, and added in Heatran more or less on a whim while browsing through the possible bulky special sweepers to replace Regice.




The Details


Latios@Dragon Gem
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP/252 SpA/252 Spe
Nature: Timid
- Draco Meteor
- Psychic
- Substitute
- Protect

One of the biggest offensive threats of every metagame in which it's allowed, all but the mightiest of special walls live in fear of Latios's Draco Meteor. Psychic beats the many popular Fighting-types and lets it do major damage without hurting its Special Attack, and Substitute lets it set up against Sucker Punch and the double Protects that Infernape's Fake Out often causes.


Infernape@Life Orb
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 236 Atk/60 SpA/212 Spe
Nature: Naive
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Heat Wave
- Rock Slide

Deals with most of the things that scare Latios, and takes care of the Steel-types it can't really hurt. Fake Out is of course a metagame-defining move, and its twin STABs have amazing super effective coverage. Rock Slide is mainly so it isn't totally helpless against Chandelure, but is also nice for other Pokémon that resist its other attacks. 212 Speed beats Garchomp, and the Attack EVs let it always OHKO 252/4 Chople Tyranitar, with the rest dumped into boosting its Heat Wave.


Breloom@Focus Sash
Ability: Effect Spore
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Spe
Nature: Jolly
- Spore
- Mach Punch
- Seed Bomb
- Protect

A Pokémon who needs no introduction, as virtually everyone knows well the rage-inducing pain of Spore. Mach Punch over a stronger Fighting move because most of the time it's too busy curing everyone's insomnia to actually attack, so it's usually better to be able to finish off a weakened threat, while Seed Bomb deals with the omnipresent bulky Waters.


Heatran@Air Balloon
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP/252 SpA/4 SpD
Nature: Modest
- Heat Wave
- Earth Power
- Hidden Power Ice
- Protect

An excellent partner for Breloom, as they cover many of each other's weaknesses. Heat Wave over Eruption for consistency and so I don't have to use Quiet, while the other moves cover everything except Rotom and hit many of the top Pokémon super effectively. Due to its mediocre Speed, it's also a major threat against fast teams in Jellicent's Trick Room, and is a perfect switch-in for Escavalier in either case.


Escavalier@Bug Gem
Ability: Swarm
EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 SpD
Nature: Brave
- Megahorn
- Iron Head
- Toxic
- Protect

Unless I missed something, there are only two Pokémon capable of OHKOing any Cresselia (barring Tanga Berry or a sash, neither of which I've ever seen) without a crit or partner support. The other is Heracross, which suffers from a lower Attack stat and worse bulk and defensive typing. If there's no Cresselia to deal with, it can still punch through even many resistant opponents. Iron Head is a decent secondary stab and can get flinch hax if TR is up (since it underspeeds everything that matters except for a tie with Ferrothorn). But its move pool beyond that is pretty much nonexistent, so I really don't know what is worth using for the third attack, because nothing I've put there has proven terribly useful. Update: After several dozen more battles, I still have yet to use any attack I've put there even a single time, so I'm still open for suggestions. Update 2: I was trolled by Minimize Chansey a few too many times, so I'm just gonna put Toxic there and hope to outstall it.


Jellicent@Sitrus Berry
Ability: Cursed Body
EVs: 236 HP/20 Def/252 SpA
Nature: Modest
- Hydro Pump
- Shadow Ball
- Trick Room
- Protect

Escavalier obviously does not like Fire-types, so Jellicent is there to protect it. Water/Ghost coverage only misses out on Hydreigon and Ferrothorn (and some irrelevant stuff) - most of the teammates can handle Hydreigon and none of its other moves can really hurt Ferrothorn anyway. Trick Room is both to counter other TR teams if they manage to set up and to use it to my own advantage against Swift Swimmers and such. The EVs guarantee it will always survive a Dragon Gem Draco Meteor from Latios (barring any prior damage), with the rest to shore up its physical bulk a bit.



Threats and Problems

I have yet to see a Rotom-H, but I think it might give me some trouble if one ever shows up, since most of my team either can't touch it or dies to one of its STABs. Update: I finally saw one, but I got such an obscene amount of paralysis hax in that battle that there's no way of telling how I would have done under more reasonable circumstances.
No single team style or Pokémon is really giving me more difficulty than the others. All of my losses have been to misprediction, hax, or a bad overall matchup. Since y'all obviously can't help me with the first two, I guess I'm just looking for suggestions for better overall matchups.
 
I would say go and make this team on PO, run through 25 battles, and post the results here. Make sure to note the pokemon that you had an easy time with and those that you had trouble with. Adjust accordingly.
 

Biosci

Danger!?
is a Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnuswon the 3rd Smogon VGC Tournamentis a Past SCL Champion
Well actually someone you can swap out for Escavalier is Lightiningrod Marowak. Marowak works great with Water Absorb Jellicent as well, so you could change the ability there. Kinda obvious, Marowak takes hits for Jelli and Jelli takes hits for Marowak. Now the set for Marowak that will help the team the most is this:

Marowak@Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 SpD
Nature: Brave
- Bonemerang
- Rock Slide
- Fire Punch/Frustration
- Protect

He resists Rock moves, and can keep your Pokemon safe from incoming Electric attacks.

You don't have to make this change, it's your team and I have no idea how it works in action. Though I have used Trick Room quite a lot and Marowak is good when it comes to it(Though it sucks balls when you miss with Bonemerang and Rock Slide). Gl hf =D
 
Alrighty right..
With latios I see no point in running a haban berry set, why you ask? Cause latios is the fastest dragon type out there and shouldn't need to fear other dragons dragon type attacks due to this. His only threat will only be other latio's speed tying which still manage to KO you through haban berry anyways. Also hidden power ground/Psychic/Draco meteor gives perfect coverage while your set would fall weak against steel types such as heatran, excadrill and metagross.
Also, Zapdos will have a lovely time with this team if you lack the dragon gem Draco meteor required to OHKO it.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I would say go and make this team on PO, run through 25 battles, and post the results here. Make sure to note the pokemon that you had an easy time with and those that you had trouble with. Adjust accordingly.
All right, I'll post that later when I have more time.
Well actually someone you can swap out for Escavalier is Lightiningrod Marowak. Marowak works great with Water Absorb Jellicent as well, so you could change the ability there. Kinda obvious, Marowak takes hits for Jelli and Jelli takes hits for Marowak. Now the set for Marowak that will help the team the most is this:

Marowak@Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 SpD
Nature: Brave
- Bonemerang
- Rock Slide
- Fire Punch/Frustration
- Protect

He resists Rock moves, and can keep your Pokemon safe from incoming Electric attacks.

You don't have to make this change, it's your team and I have no idea how it works in action. Though I have used Trick Room quite a lot and Marowak is good when it comes to it(Though it sucks balls when you miss with Bonemerang and Rock Slide). Gl hf =D
But without Escavalier, I can't really do anything to Cresselia, which was the main reason I put it on the team in the first place. I like the idea, but I just can't see getting rid of Escavalier without adding something else to deal with her first.
Alrighty right..
With latios I see no point in running a haban berry set, why you ask? Cause latios is the fastest dragon type out there and shouldn't need to fear other dragons dragon type attacks due to this. His only threat will only be other latio's speed tying which still manage to KO you through haban berry anyways. Also hidden power ground/Psychic/Draco meteor gives perfect coverage while your set would fall weak against steel types such as heatran, excadrill and metagross.
Also, Zapdos will have a lovely time with this team if you lack the dragon gem Draco meteor required to OHKO it.
Fair enough, I'll see if it makes a difference against those. I haven't been seeing much Kingdra lately anyway, which was one of the main reasons I gave it the berry in the first place.
 
it isn't much but, give escavalier quick gaurd.
Since the only usefullness he has is MH and Iron Head, you might aswell slap that on him incase you need it.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
PO testing isn't really going that well, because I can't seem to find Skarmbliss anywhere and the other servers suck for doubles.
it isn't much but, give escavalier quick gaurd.
Since the only usefullness he has is MH and Iron Head, you might aswell slap that on him incase you need it.
I guess it could protect Latios from a Sucker Punch now and then. I'll give it a shot.
 

soul_survivor

VGCPL Champion
A nice team and looks very interesting. well without further ado heres my rate:

-Infernape-Probably imo the most versatile fake outer in the game. I see you have tailwind. You can replace rock slide since its pretty weake unstabbed with encore. Most teams will try to stall you to death with protect when you have tailwind up. You can then proceed to encore them and lock em up in a useless move.

Tornadus-Is standard obviously. Idk about the use of taunt vs tr iff you got jelli+escav but substitute can work in taunts position. Both are situational but I find sub gets more use.

Latios: Once again standard though thunderbolt is pretty weak on latios from experience. Though theres not much to recomend there. Hpfire is even weaker but hits steels, and sub can work vs suckerpunch, and can create a fakeout+sub turn 1 combination. Also with sub you won't be afraid of other dragons and losing speed ties to latios. I would reccomend a dragon gem or lifeorb though.

Regiice: Err I never seen one so I have no comment

escaviler: Standard and a great cress beater

Jelli: Standard once again


Also Skarmblisses Po server sometimes isn't on but it usually comes back on in 30 minutes or so.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Did some more testing, just gonna reply to everyone's suggestions together here.

Latios: Sub has certainly saved me on numerous occasions. However, I lost count of the number of times I was staring down a Tyranitar at like 3% and wishing I could do something besides Draco Meteor to it. Strongly considering switching back to HP Ground.

Infernape: Encore has come in handy sometimes, but on the other hand it's really annoying to be totally unable to even touch Chandelure (and I've been down to just Infernape against one on several ocasions). So I'm still on the fence there as well.

Tornadus: I'm actually considering dropping it entirely. I rarely use Tailwind or Taunt, and mono-Flying coverage just isn't enough (even with Hammer Arm, it still can't do much). Any suggestions for a replacement? Edit: gonna try Breloom in its place.

Regice: Probably the least-used mon on my team, but it works well when I do use it. Also willing to consider a replacement.

Escavalier: Twelve kinds of awesome, definitely a contender along with Latios for my MVP. However, like every other move I've tried in the third slot, I literally have not used Quick Guard a single time. So I still have no idea what to put there.

Jellicent: Works as expected. No complaints aside from the miss hax.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Bumping for some major team overhauling. Summary of changes:

Latios - gave it Dragon Gem, Draco Meteor, Substitute
Infernape - gave it a Life Orb because Breloom stole its sash
Tornadus and Regice - dropped for Breloom and Heatran
Escavalier and Jellicent - still no good third move for Escavalier, adjusted Jellicent's EVs to account for losing Tailwind
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I'm going to start RNGing this team soon, so one final bump with a couple more changes (Infernape's EVs and adding Toxic to Escavalier) in case anyone wants to make more suggestions before I get too committed to anything.
 
If you're going to run a Trick Room Jellicent, might as well minimize its speed with low IVs and a Quiet Nature. It would also be cool to give it Water Spout since you normally want to stay away from moves with 80% accuracy or less. Water Spout gives you a powerful STAB spread move that doesn't get diverted by Storm Drain. Maybe give it Recover over Protect so it can stall since you gave Escavalier Toxic and keep Water Spout powerful at the same time.

Your Heatran is probably going to switch into a lot of attacks, so you'll probably get more out of a Shuca Berry than an Air Balloon.

Epic Latios is epic, but the use of Draco Meteor makes Substitute kind of pointless since you're going to switch him out after the 1st or 2nd use of it. If he gets paralyzed, that just works in your favor since you have Trick Room Jellicent.

All around, the team is pretty good, but it goes without saying that Ludicolo + Rain = TROLL! You're going to be reliant on Jellicent in that situation, so maybe you can use that to your advantage.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I dunno about Water Spout, since it won't always be working in TR and I don't really like the unreliability. I'll give it some testing, though, maybe save that for the last RNG.

I've actually never wasted a Sub yet; it always ends up broken before I get an opportunity to switch, if I end up switching at all.

Escavalier (my standard anti-rain lead) goes through Ludicolo like a hot knife through butter, and it can't OHKO Jellicent barring a crit or partner support, so it's never really given me trouble either.
 
Latios: Just an idea, but I would at least give Dragon pulse a try over Daco meteor because the Higher pp and no nasty stat drops will keep it steadier plus you still have that base 130 SP attack.

Escalivier: Try Arial ace to handle the fighting types, Toxic isn't good in such a fast paced Metagame

The two Fre types: Try swaping Infernape for Machamp, or as I like to call him... CAPTAIN FALCON! Using Machamp will make your water weaknesses less which is always good

Overall: You need more Diversity. You have two fire types, two fighting types, two fire weaknesses, and two Ghost/Dark weaknesses. Walls such as Blissy and Skarmory will hurt REALLY bad. I also want to put a stress on the Regis, espeacially Registeel, who can take allot of your teams attacks as the only ones who that can beat it easily are your 2 fire types(which I just said it was bad to have both)
 
No offense, but I really don't think you know what you are talking about. First off, Blissey and Skarmory are not even common in the VGC 2012 metagame, nor are the Regis. Infernape is much more helpful in this team as it has access to a very fast Fake Out and gives great coverage. Draco Meteor with Dragon Gems gets crucial OHKOes that Dragon Pulse would not otherwise.

You might want to try Substitute over Toxic. Ray used that in his 2011 team and it worked great. Toxic is pretty useless and will hardly do anything.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
@Luigi:
I actually started with Dragon Pulse, but switched to Draco Meteor when I noticed it tended to switch or die after one or two attacks anyway.
If I were to get rid of one of the Fire-types, it would be Heatran. Infernape's Fake Out is absurdly useful, and Machamp doesn't hit any of the common Steel-types (besides Ferrothorn, if that counts as common) super effectively. Really haven't had a problem with Water-types as Escavalier+Jellicent tends to tear through them.
Half of my team easily beats Registeel one on one, so I wouldn't be too worried about even if it were common. And I don't think I've seen any of those besides the Regice I originally had on my own team.

@Both re: Toxic
I tried both of those moves, and never found an occasion to use either. I just want to have another shot at beating stupid Minimize Chansey.
 
Fair enough, Substitute is pretty damn hard to use anyway. Though I honestly doubt anyone will be using Minimize Chansey in a real life VGC tournament, if you ever do plan to use this team at a tournament.
 
No offense, but I really don't think you know what you are talking about. First off, Blissey and Skarmory are not even common in the VGC 2012 metagame, nor are the Regis. Infernape is much more helpful in this team as it has access to a very fast Fake Out and gives great coverage. Draco Meteor with Dragon Gems gets crucial OHKOes that Dragon Pulse would not otherwise.

You might want to try Substitute over Toxic. Ray used that in his 2011 team and it worked great. Toxic is pretty useless and will hardly do anything.
I havn't played the game very often recently because all the EVs on my pokemon are so messed up that I often just cant make a good team on it(Like my Zeckrom has max Sp attack but minnimal attack a lax nature) so I often don't know whats common and whats not besides this sites tier list. I'll probably start doing more battles once I get more into Action replay(Don't worry its just for the EV changing Items).
 
@ Voodoo Pimp: Yah you probably don't need heatran anyway. Some good options are Tranitar/Hippodown or Abomasnow so you can make Rain and Sun teams less threatening. Just an idea but starting the battles with a double fake out from Infernape and another Fake out user. Also you can use Empoleon to mess up stuff like Swift swim Kingdra, Ludicolo, And rain sweepers in genrall. You said you had problems with Minnimize Chansey, I may sound like one of the brainless NPCs but Arial ace could help there as it never misses and Cansey has the lowest base defense in the game.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Cybertron: I know Chansey probably won't see much use in a real tournament, but if I ever run into it I'd rather have something for it, especially since I'm not really using that move slot for anything else.

Luigi: I don't really want to use any of the weather changers, because weather teams don't give me much trouble and the damage could easily do more harm than good (I've actually won two games by people KOing their own Pokémon with weather damage). I usually use Fake Out to let Latios set up a sub or blow things up (or let Breloom Spore something, or Jellicent set up TR, etc.) so having two of them would trade a ton of tactical value for a bit of free damage. I really haven't seen much about Empoleon, what do you think would work well on it? And I think you underestimate how insanely bulky Chansey is - even Infernape's Close Combat doesn't kill it, and Aerial Ace would be a 7HKO.
 
Why not replace Infernape with Hariyama? He gets Fake Out and benefits from Trick Room, you already have a Fire type, and a Guts-boosted Close Combat from Hariyama 0HKOes Chansey.
 
@ voodoo pimp: Like I said to Cybertron I cant do much battling with my screwed up EVs so I don't know much more than what the base stats are. So that explains Chansey. Now on the topic of Empoleon Something like this would work out well if you want a sweeper.

Leftovers/ Life orb, Quite
EVs: 252 HP, 200 Sp Attack, 52 attack

Scald, Hydro pump
Grass knot
Ice beam
Rock slide/ Brick break

If you want a supporter then you can try something more like this

Shucka/Chople/Wacan berry, Relaxed/ Sassy
I dunno what EVs

Scald
Knock of/Yawn/Icy wind
Knock of/Yawn/Icy wind
Aqua jet/ Grass knot/ Ice Beam/ Rock slide/ Drill peck

These are just basic ideas you can change it to something you think or know is better.
For a Chansey counter you can try a Chansey of your own instead of Empoleon.
 

soul_survivor

VGCPL Champion
The team as Im looking at it now is one of the few rmts I read that is solid. Well w/o further ado I'll try to give in a few comments on it.

Escaviler: Ohko'ing cress=Autosigned. Until I read this I always thought of ways to get the annoying cresselia out of the picture. After reading this rmt the 1st time I was inspired to use it and well I can see why its your mvp. Its awesome sauce,

Infernape: Another versatile pokemon and well being to ohko ttar through chople is a amazing feat(it has soo many different ev variants too), and lifeorb nape is pretty scary. I'd recommend overheat>heatwave for more dmg output but then you lose a spread move. Though it can be something you can test.

Heatran: Well Heatrans a odd beast. Barely used but typing allows it to wall the special dragons to death. Though its typing brings upon a quite a few weaknesses. I would recommend chople berry as fighting is more prominent than the ground and airballoon pops if its hit which makes it not reliable, or shuca if ya still fear ground attacks.


Well the other 3 are in great shape and no need to comment.
 

voodoo pimp

marco pimp
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Why not replace Infernape with Hariyama? He gets Fake Out and benefits from Trick Room, you already have a Fire type, and a Guts-boosted Close Combat from Hariyama 0HKOes Chansey.
But it also has a much slower Fake Out (can't outflinch Hitmontop, for instance) and can't beat Metagross or Scizor.
@ voodoo pimp: Like I said to Cybertron I cant do much battling with my screwed up EVs so I don't know much more than what the base stats are. So that explains Chansey. Now on the topic of Empoleon Something like this would work out well if you want a sweeper.

Leftovers/ Life orb, Quite
EVs: 252 HP, 200 Sp Attack, 52 attack

Scald, Hydro pump
Grass knot
Ice beam
Rock slide/ Brick break

If you want a supporter then you can try something more like this

Shucka/Chople/Wacan berry, Relaxed/ Sassy
I dunno what EVs

Scald
Knock of/Yawn/Icy wind
Knock of/Yawn/Icy wind
Aqua jet/ Grass knot/ Ice Beam/ Rock slide/ Drill peck

These are just basic ideas you can change it to something you think or know is better.
For a Chansey counter you can try a Chansey of your own instead of Empoleon.
The first one seems like it'd be mostly redundant with Jellicent, so I don't know about that. Second one seems more interesting - I'll give it a try, but I generally prefer Pokémon that do lots of damage.
The team as Im looking at it now is one of the few rmts I read that is solid. Well w/o further ado I'll try to give in a few comments on it.

Escaviler: Ohko'ing cress=Autosigned. Until I read this I always thought of ways to get the annoying cresselia out of the picture. After reading this rmt the 1st time I was inspired to use it and well I can see why its your mvp. Its awesome sauce,

Infernape: Another versatile pokemon and well being to ohko ttar through chople is a amazing feat(it has soo many different ev variants too), and lifeorb nape is pretty scary. I'd recommend overheat>heatwave for more dmg output but then you lose a spread move. Though it can be something you can test.

Heatran: Well Heatrans a odd beast. Barely used but typing allows it to wall the special dragons to death. Though its typing brings upon a quite a few weaknesses. I would recommend chople berry as fighting is more prominent than the ground and airballoon pops if its hit which makes it not reliable, or shuca if ya still fear ground attacks.


Well the other 3 are in great shape and no need to comment.
Thanks for the compliments!
I actually hadn't considered Overheat on Infernape, just kinda assumed Heat Wave would be by far the best option and moved on. But now that I have Heat Wave on Heatran, and I did some calcs (OHKOs Scizor and all but the most specially defensive of Ferrothorn, and 2HKOs Metagross, with Occa/rain), that does look promising. Definitely gonna test it out now.
Tried Chople for a while, and it got about as much use as the Air Balloon did, so I could still go either way on that.
 
@ voodoo pimp: Pokemon that do damage are obviously more important on any team but having just a few Supporters is usually pretty helpful. If your going for the second one then you pretty much want to abuse the fact that it's defensive typing resists a lot of popular pokemon.
 

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