Battling Ram (Peaked #1)

Kidogo · May 3rd, 2012, 1:53:50 AM

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:

...

HolyAvatar · May 3rd, 2012, 2:30:54 AM

I was about to comment how awesome your team is, lost all what I wrote and you edited your post showing you got 1st place.

Well, congratulations great team.

**Taylor** · May 3rd, 2012, 6:02:56 AM

You've done extremely well, and this goes to show that Regenerator is a worthy ability and one of the most impressive. It's peaked higher than my team thanks to one-turn Spores and few speed-ties; like brii, you've shaped up your ideas and abused Regenerator to its maximum. Are you sure you don't find yourself needing to ever Slack Off? This intrigues me because I would defintitely consider replacing Flamethrower for Slack Off and giving Tyranitar Fire Blast; your EV requirements can still be met but with a mixed spread to accomodate for replacing one of Crunch/Pursuit.

I'd suggest Substitute ahead of Rock Polish so you don't get revenge killed by priority. Right now he is performing a similar role to Salac Chomp but finding the time to "double dance" is extremely difficult to accomplish. Substitute saves Terrakion from priority and Breloom users will be aware they just need to set up Swords Dance on Tyranitar or Genesect locked into Thunderbolt: with Life Orb, Breloom can be achieve this at +2.

Air Balloon Terrakion was majorly successful when I ran it at the time in Standard OU (for the like of Excadrill, and STAB Earthquake in general. It's known to be effective as I have mentioned it in the DW forum not long ago. It is a free Substitute against non-Brick Break Excadrill,. which isn't very common to begin with so you should be able to take advantage of that.

This team has already proved its position so I can't be too critical nor will I force these alternatives down your throat because until you find yourself lower down on the ladder, you must be doing something right.

Congrats!

No Luck Involved · May 3rd, 2012, 8:02:55 AM

This looks like an amazing team, I haven't played much DW but Slowbro is great and in OU I loved using Air Balloon double dance Terrakion back in the day. I really like the role you've given Garchomp too, the offensive synergy with Terrakion looks perfect. I may just give DW a go with this team!

One thing about your Slowbro, why those EVs? I would have thought something like 248 HP / 216 Def / 40 SpDef / 4 Spe would have yielded more bulk and provides a Regen and hazards number?

Great team and congrats on the success!

Jimbon · May 3rd, 2012, 11:18:14 AM

I love this team man, how it does so well against the most common variations of Sand Teams while still bringing some different stuff to the table. After looking through this team, there wasn't really a lot I could recommend in terms of improvements, however I am interested as to how you deal with offensive Rain Teams. If Keldeo gets a free switch it can get a free Calm Mind or two meaning Psychic from Slowbro isn't doing a whole lot. Toxic from Slowbro takes 2-3 turns to rack up, by that time Slowbro is getting hit by a +2 Hidden Power. I'd definately try Psyshock over Psychic on your Slowbro as with no Thunder Wave on Slowbro, Keldeo can cause you some problems. I might give this more thought later but for now this is all I can see.

Overall, fantastic team Kidogo. Grats on #1!

Kidogo · May 3rd, 2012, 3:55:26 PM

Thanks for the comments guys.

Quote:

Are you sure you don't find yourself needing to ever Slack Off? This intrigues me because I would defintitely consider replacing Flamethrower for Slack Off and giving Tyranitar Fire Blast; your EV requirements can still be met but with a mixed spread to accomodate for replacing one of Crunch/Pursuit.

Honestly, I've had slack off on slowbro quite recently and taken it off for the following reasons. Obviously with regenerator, recovery is a lot less needed, especially since most of slowbro's targets--excadrill, garchomp, gliscor, fighters--are usually mauled in one turn. Furthermore, most of them can boost their stats, making it guaranteed for them to do more than 50% damage on me per turn. What this leads to is my pretty much never having the time to recover against such threats, since I need to be attacking them or else they will eventually beat me. The only exception to this is against bulky waters like politoed, where it would be nice to be able to stall them out. Honestly though, this team has very little issue with bulky waters. Meanwhile, flamethrower is a fairly niche move, true, but has a couple of invaluable traits. First of all, if I can predict on the switch, it instantly takes out genesect and scizor expecting a weak scald or psychic. Given that these are some of the most common switch-ins to slowbro, I've gotten a good amount of usage from flamethrower. And while putting fire blast on tyranitar could help, I feel the moves I have are very valuable and would be hesitant to take any of them off. Furthermore, tyranitar usually goes down fairly early-game, and slowbro is a great bait for them.

Quote:

I love this team man, how it does so well against the most common variations of Sand Teams while still bringing some different stuff to the table. After looking through this team, there wasn't really a lot I could recommend in terms of improvements, however I am interested as to how you deal with offensive Rain Teams. If Keldeo gets a free switch it can get a free Calm Mind or two meaning Psychic from Slowbro isn't doing a whole lot. Toxic from Slowbro takes 2-3 turns to rack up, by that time Slowbro is getting hit by a +2 Hidden Power. I'd definately try Psyshock over Psychic on your Slowbro as with no Thunder Wave on Slowbro, Keldeo can cause you some problems. I might give this more thought later but for now this is all I can see.

This is a good point, and again, I have had both thunder wave and psychock in previous movesets. My reasoning for neither of them is basically this: anything slowbro has the opportunity to thunder wave could probably be hit with a supereffective move, given the pokes slowbro covers and its moveset. Furthermore, any booster that does not boost speed can easily be revenged by deoxys, and I am generally willing to sac slowbro to take out a powerful threat. Meanwhile, speed-boosters cannot get through slowbro. Psyshock would allow slowbro to hit keldeo harder, true, but it doesn't come close to KOing anyway. Meanwhile, psychic is much more useful for conkeldurr, breloom (which is guarentted to survive a psyshock at full health, whereas psychic is guaranteed to OHKO), and the like. I'm still continuing to test this though.

Slowbro is definitely the most malleable set right now. I'm actually considering a specs set, which I've seen to be very effective in the past.

Quote:

I'd suggest Substitute ahead of Rock Polish so you don't get revenge killed by priority. Right now he is performing a similar role to Salac Chomp but finding the time to "double dance" is extremely difficult to accomplish. Substitute saves Terrakion from priority and Breloom users will be aware they just need to set up Swords Dance on Tyranitar or Genesect locked into Thunderbolt: with Life Orb, Breloom can be achieve this at +2.

I've thought about substitute on terrakion, but this is my reasoning against it: one of the best things about terrakion is that it outspeeds even agiliscor, excadrill, deoxys-s, and the like at +2. If I can manage to wekaen the opposing team, terrakion doesn't even need attack boosts to sweep easily. double dance also gives incredible versatility, letting terra combat both offensive and defensive teams. Substitute also clashes with balloon, and doesn't help very much--take the example of excadrill. I come in with balloon, they rock slide, break balloon. I sub. then enxt turn, they eq while I CC, leaving me down 25% from if I had just CCed. With rock polish, however, I can RP as they rock slide and then CC the next turn, letting me essentially gain +2 speed for free on one of the most common pokes in the metagame. Furthermore, sub + SD is more effective on salacchomp because of sand veil--he can use it to scout for misses. The incredible advantage with terrakion is that he can afford to take a hit or two while setting up, especially thanks to his rock-typing and thus SpD boost in SS. Not having substitute does make me more priority weak, but I basically need to get rid of priority anyway for terrakion to have a chance of sweeping, which becomes one of the highest priorities for this team. As a note: deoxys takes a max of 74% from +2 adamant LO breloom mach punch, meaning that if I keep him healthy he can easily come in any time to stop a breloom sweep (although abviously I would watch out for bullet seed).

No luck, thanks for the comments. The EV spread brings HP to a leftovers and regenerator number (although lefties is canceled by sandstorm, many times slowbro is used in rain so it's actually not insignificant), Def is maximized, and therest is in SpD with 4 Spe cause I speed creep. And definitely feel free to take a go with it!

Cicada · May 4th, 2012, 7:24:33 AM

This is a good and original team which differs from the standard tss tyranitar/chandelure/breloom/garchomp/excadrill/genesect or keldeo, I really like it :).
I suck at rating team so my reply so I'll not propose solution, overall great team and congrats for your peak !

Kidogo · May 7th, 2012, 2:30:35 PM

Thanks cicada--I've enjoyed battling you a lot.

Thinking about testing out amoonguss over slowbro after the blaziken ban--what have people's experiences been with it?

Tendie · May 10th, 2012, 1:23:51 AM

I find this team always a challenge to face, I can count on one hand the number of times I've emerged victorious from battling this team.

No comments, just praise!

bluemon · May 10th, 2012, 1:45:37 AM

no slack off on slowbro? D:

anyways, great team. you had so many teams and i faced all your teams except this one. i think you have problems with breloom once DEOXYS is gone. wont a +2 mach punch kill everything as well as bullet seed for slowbro?

Kidogo · May 11th, 2012, 4:22:51 PM

Thanks tendie :)

I've tested slack off on slowbro but, as I stated earlier, I usually don't have the time to recover as I'm usually in, sponge attack, fire off attack, and out, but I have thought about including it. I've been testing out amoonguss and celebi in slowbro's place as better breloom checks, as you're right it is one of the biggest threats to my team. Mostly I'll just have to make sure to keep deoxys and/or garchomp at full health if I see one, and I can usually play around it, but good players with breloom are some of the hardest for me to beat with this team.
EDIT: Oh, so you're BMN bluemon--I've battled you so many times without knowing ;)

May 3rd, 2012, 6:02:56 AM	#3
Taylor no.... no i do not look like psyduck Moderator Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 3,988 play?	You've done extremely well, and this goes to show that Regenerator is a worthy ability and one of the most impressive. It's peaked higher than my team thanks to one-turn Spores and few speed-ties; like brii, you've shaped up your ideas and abused Regenerator to its maximum. Are you sure you don't find yourself needing to ever Slack Off? This intrigues me because I would defintitely consider replacing Flamethrower for Slack Off and giving Tyranitar Fire Blast; your EV requirements can still be met but with a mixed spread to accomodate for replacing one of Crunch/Pursuit. I'd suggest Substitute ahead of Rock Polish so you don't get revenge killed by priority. Right now he is performing a similar role to Salac Chomp but finding the time to "double dance" is extremely difficult to accomplish. Substitute saves Terrakion from priority and Breloom users will be aware they just need to set up Swords Dance on Tyranitar or Genesect locked into Thunderbolt: with Life Orb, Breloom can be achieve this at +2. Air Balloon Terrakion was majorly successful when I ran it at the time in Standard OU (for the like of Excadrill, and STAB Earthquake in general. It's known to be effective as I have mentioned it in the DW forum not long ago. It is a free Substitute against non-Brick Break Excadrill,. which isn't very common to begin with so you should be able to take advantage of that. This team has already proved its position so I can't be too critical nor will I force these alternatives down your throat because until you find yourself lower down on the ladder, you must be doing something right. Congrats! __________________

May 3rd, 2012, 8:02:55 AM	#4
No Luck Involved Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 1,293	This looks like an amazing team, I haven't played much DW but Slowbro is great and in OU I loved using Air Balloon double dance Terrakion back in the day. I really like the role you've given Garchomp too, the offensive synergy with Terrakion looks perfect. I may just give DW a go with this team! One thing about your Slowbro, why those EVs? I would have thought something like 248 HP / 216 Def / 40 SpDef / 4 Spe would have yielded more bulk and provides a Regen and hazards number? Great team and congrats on the success! __________________ I like birds Keep it sexy An RU blast from the past!

May 3rd, 2012, 11:18:14 AM	#5
Jimbon already over Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 486	I love this team man, how it does so well against the most common variations of Sand Teams while still bringing some different stuff to the table. After looking through this team, there wasn't really a lot I could recommend in terms of improvements, however I am interested as to how you deal with offensive Rain Teams. If Keldeo gets a free switch it can get a free Calm Mind or two meaning Psychic from Slowbro isn't doing a whole lot. Toxic from Slowbro takes 2-3 turns to rack up, by that time Slowbro is getting hit by a +2 Hidden Power. I'd definately try Psyshock over Psychic on your Slowbro as with no Thunder Wave on Slowbro, Keldeo can cause you some problems. I might give this more thought later but for now this is all I can see. Overall, fantastic team Kidogo. Grats on #1! __________________

May 7th, 2012, 2:30:35 PM	#8
Kidogo Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 420	Thanks cicada--I've enjoyed battling you a lot. Thinking about testing out amoonguss over slowbro after the blaziken ban--what have people's experiences been with it? __________________ Check out my RMT (Baton) Passport to Victory (Peaked #2)! Want to read a warstory? Try this one: Dragons Dinos, and Donkeys (I mean ponies): an OU Warstory

May 10th, 2012, 1:45:37 AM	#10
bluemon Join Date: Oct 2010 Posts: 1,498 ♠ AmoongBro ♠	no slack off on slowbro? D: anyways, great team. you had so many teams and i faced all your teams except this one. i think you have problems with breloom once DEOXYS is gone. wont a +2 mach punch kill everything as well as bullet seed for slowbro? __________________ AmoongBro User (22:54:20) *** Your rank in Dream World OU is 15/16972 [1442 points / 244 battles]!

May 3rd, 2012, 1:53:50 AM	#1
Kidogo Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 420	Battling Ram (Peaked #1) 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 ... 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. 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 Last edited by Kidogo; May 4th, 2012 at 4:45:13 PM. Reason: Added importable

May 3rd, 2012, 2:30:54 AM	#2
HolyAvatar Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 66	I was about to comment how awesome your team is, lost all what I wrote and you edited your post showing you got 1st place. Well, congratulations great team.

May 4th, 2012, 7:24:33 AM	#7
Cicada radical dreamer Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 356 France	This is a good and original team which differs from the standard tss tyranitar/chandelure/breloom/garchomp/excadrill/genesect or keldeo, I really like it :). I suck at rating team so my reply so I'll not propose solution, overall great team and congrats for your peak !

May 10th, 2012, 1:23:51 AM	#9
Tendie Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 59	I find this team always a challenge to face, I can count on one hand the number of times I've emerged victorious from battling this team. No comments, just praise!

May 11th, 2012, 4:22:51 PM	#11
Kidogo Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 420	Thanks tendie :) I've tested slack off on slowbro but, as I stated earlier, I usually don't have the time to recover as I'm usually in, sponge attack, fire off attack, and out, but I have thought about including it. I've been testing out amoonguss and celebi in slowbro's place as better breloom checks, as you're right it is one of the biggest threats to my team. Mostly I'll just have to make sure to keep deoxys and/or garchomp at full health if I see one, and I can usually play around it, but good players with breloom are some of the hardest for me to beat with this team. EDIT: Oh, so you're BMN bluemon--I've battled you so many times without knowing ;) __________________ Check out my RMT (Baton) Passport to Victory (Peaked #2)! Want to read a warstory? Try this one: Dragons Dinos, and Donkeys (I mean ponies): an OU Warstory