Gen 2 A different team? RMT

[Crystal_]

This is a GSC team I made around STCurseHeracross. It's got me varying results so far, which, on part, is to be expected due to the nature and speed of the team and its "unusual" explosion targets, but I'm open to suggestions and comments to improve the team!

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Snorlax (M) @ Leftovers
- Curse
- Body Slam
- Earthquake
- Selfdestruct

Snorlax's main role consists on baiting Skarmory and exploding on it. Taking Skarmory out opens up Heracross, eases the load on Exeggutor and speeds up Porygon2. EQ weakens Tyranitar, Steelix and Rhydon switches while Body Slam is useful for paralyzing Skarmory. +1 Selfdestruct deals over 81% to Skarmory, so paralyzing it is useful if Skarmory packs Curse. It can also let me fish for an FP, as +2 SD OHKOes Skarm. Body Slam is also annoying for Miltank; if I can keep it paralyzed, Miltank might lose to Curse Heracross and Curse Porygon and becomes an unreliable switch to Tyranitar. Explding on Miltank also helps Heracross and the other cursers.

Heracross (M) @ Leftovers
- Curse
- Megahorn
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

The Pokemon the team revolves around. It's actually very useful defensively working as a good status absorber and a good check for most mixsweepers, and Curse Machamp and other Heracross as well, and can switch into Marowak when healthy as well.

Muk (M) @ Leftovers
- Fire Blast
- Sludge Bomb
- Explosion
- Curse

It doesn't have a clear role / purpose, but it's true that most of the times what it ends up wearing down / explosing into is useful for the team. It's useful for wearing down cursettars/rhydons, which are a pain for porygon2/heracross respectiely, and helps snorlax as well. Poison lets me wear them down in switches, while explosion deals to them up to 50%; but if Snorlax ended up paralyzing the rock-type, +1 explosion can hit them for around 65-70%. Muk can curse up against mixttars and the explode for the KO though, which could help eggy and maybe pgon2/lax as well.
Muk's explosion can OHKO Miltank half the times, another common Muk check that tries to neutralize its curses. Taking out Miltank can basically open up Snorlax, Heracross, Porygon2 and maybe ttar. Or charm Umbreon might be what swicthes into Muk, which is also a pain for Eggy, lax, porygon2 and ttar.
Muk sometimes sees ghosts instead, which can be pusuited by tyranitar, although Muk can go 1 for 1 against gengar too with fire blasts. Other times it sees Starmie, which, well, doesn't really help anything other than maybe ttar, which might also switch into starmie when it's half-healthyish and going to Psychic to crunch/pursuit it maybe... Other times it manages to catch Snorlax or Zapdos which is great! Either way, I think this is the most replaceable Pokemon of the team.

Exeggutor (M) @ Leftovers
- Giga Drain
- Sleep Powder
- Psychic
- Explosion

Offensively, explosion's main target is usually Zapdos, which Heracross basically needs to be out, although heracross may have a chance against a sleep powdered one. Plus Zapdos is also walling ttar and could be a pain against the team's defenses. Exeggutor is also good for wearing down Skarms until they are in the KO range of explosion, which can be achieved after multiple Psychics and probably a sleep powder to help out, but a sleeping skarm is also walling heracross, although it's generally a safe bait for lax, who can set up twice. As said, KOing skarm can open up heracross, porygon2 and snorlax. Umbreon is a bad matchup for Eggy, but exploding on it for a KO is great for the team; could be opening up the 3 cursers and probably ttar too. Taking out Suicune is never a bad thing either, obviously.
Defensively, Exeggutor offers coverage against Vaporeon, Steelix, Rhydon, Cursettar, Machamp and Marowak mainly. mixttars are better handled by other pokemon. I have considered Leech Seed over Giga for vaporeons as well.

Tyranitar (M) @ Leftovers
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Fire Blast
- DynamicPunch

First off, I know not using Rock Slide seems weird, but I really like DynamicPunch for Snorlax, Miltank and Umbreon and can help against other ttars, i either need Crunch or Roar for Misdreavus (along with Pursuit obviously) and having crunch helps against gars, and Fire Blast because Steelix can be a real pain for the team and can help racking up pursuit damage on skarm. Plus, Zapdos is sometimes the target of egg's explosion. Crunch+Pursuit ttar trades with Misdreavus trying to ml+ps me at worst, since missy easily dies to crunch+80bp pursuit, or dies to psong if it stays in. Taking out the ghost types eases the load on heracross, pgon2, and muk.

Porygon2 @ Leftovers
- Ice Beam
- Curse
- Double-Edge
- Recover

The second sweeper of the team, and can be okay defensively as well. It can beat d-e curselax 1 on 1 and usually bslam curselax too, depending on how (un)lucky I get with fps. I must really be careful when dealing with snorlax because nothing can really switch into a +1 normal attack outside of lax/egg/muk for the explosion/sleep. STcurselax can be a real pain especially, but I'm just not happy phazing with ttar... I feel its other 4 moves are necessary...

 

[Borat]

One of the main things I like that I don't see abused enough is a bait-exploding SNORLAX. But this team does that, and I like that. I've seen gengar/egg/cloy on electrics done to death already, and everyone knows how those play out. However, I don't think that's the proper combination of 5 to take advantage of a snorlax that does this.

Also, ttar shouldn't give up rock slide for dpunch ever. If you want to luck snorlax, just use rock slide. There's no reason to lose zapdos coverage ever.

Also pgon2 + heracross on a team is too much inconsistency. What I mean by that is that they're both tried and true "bad" pokemon on many levels, but primarily because of their failure to show up in a good portion of matches. Having both on one teams means you're playing 5v6 most of the time and even potentially playing 4v6.

 

[Jorgen]

Lax set is interesting. However, its lack of Rest brings up the next point, which is...

...that the lack of fallback isn't. You're basically forced to just surprise the opponent with first-turn Exploders and hope you catch the right stuff, because you have a lot of issues with very common things that either force you to explode defensively and predictably or just flatout beat you. Curselax, Zapdos, Vap, and the odd ML Pass Umbreon all wreck you if you give your opponent time to catch on.

Rock Slide and Roar on Ttar helps with most of this (except for Vap, obviously), I mean RS > Dpunch because of what Borat said about Zapdos and Roar > Fire Blast because the Fire move is not really doing too much for you unless you're trying to sweep with Ttar (which really isn't happening).

Also, while it makes this team look a lot more "standard" and doesn't synergize quite as well on offense, Zapdos over Muk or Pgon2 would help - it's hard to fully explain everything Zapdos does for you, it's just Zapdos, it just works. And yes I'm really suggesting Zapdos like this.

For a surprise this team works well enough (though really at the very least put Rock Slide on Ttar). And ultimately, that's probably what you're looking for with this team. However, a lot of your descriptions assume you have more time to play around with your opponent than you usually will. The more you try that slower stuff instead of just Exploding, the more time you give people to realize what you're up to or to build up momentum of their own. If you want the time to do what you say you can and not just Explode like a madman, you will need more fallbacks and better defensive synergy (i.e. a more "standard" team).

 

[Crystal_]

I am aware of the speed the team requires. I couldve been misleading when talking about muk and poisoning ttars I think, it's true most times i'm forced to just sac muk against ttar/rhydon. It's not because these two specifically give the team a lot of trouble, just because... going for the poison is too slow for the team's defenses, in general. Plus, i'm not running spikes, so 1. wearing ttar/rhydon down with muk is much slower, and 2. the longer the battle lasts the quicker i'm being worn down.

The pokemon I had in mind when creating the team was heracross, probably followed by pgon2/muk so yeah, that's where the inconsistency comes from... SDCurselax was just a brainless addition when looking for teammates for a fast paced offensive team centered around that hera set. So yeah, if I had to make the most consistent/reliable/standard team overall around sdcurselax, straight from my head right now, it'd probably be something like lax/egg/zap and 3 of cloy/lix/wak/champ. Or maybe quag. I just wanted to be more "creative" this time haha.

And yeah about slide ttar, just yeah. And maybe I should put Roar over FB too. FB was mainly so that lix can't wreak as much havok if i explode egg, but it's not that ttar is going to switch into steelix anyway, it was to avoid lix switching into ttar for free basically... Or I could FB over Crunch if i phaze. lol ttars.

 

[Borat]

I like muk. If you want to throw on a zapdos, do it over pgon2. Muk is pretty damn consistent always, if even on explosion alone. Pgon2 vs even DE lax isn't a surefire thing; both of you are taking 50% a turn if you're both attacking. Recoil hurts you a lot.

And roar over crunch is my choice. FB covers far more than crunch does; crunch's only merit is lucking spc downs. FB covers egg just as well, plus you get steelix, skarm, and heras.

 

[Crystal_]

As far as I know, pgon2 can just stall d-e curselax and/or go for the freeze in the first place.

RS/Roar/Pursuit/FB is what I had in mind initially (and the most straightforward set for the non-cursing pursuit phazing ttar in general). It all started when I wanted to try Dpunch+Crunch for Miltanks instead, which wasn't a good idea all things considered (ttar is still walled by a million other things so yea).

 

[Jorgen]

Crunch handily 2HKOs Ghosts though, which is pretty necessary if you want to Pursuit against Missy or Dpunch Gengar. The 100% accuracy against Egg is also good so you don't get shafted in that matchup even if you predict correctly. And of course the Spc. Fall chance can make these matchups go from guessing games to absolutely trivial. If you want Ttar to do what it's supposed to, Crunch is the best way to go to minimize its struggles. However I will admit that Steelix is awfully annoying for a specialized Ttar without Fblast.