Cigarettes in the Theatre

[peng]

Cigarettes in the Theatre

Introduction
Hello. 'Cigarettes in the Theatre' is a team I've been using for a few weeks and has been working pretty well for me so far. However, there are a few weaknesses I need some help taking care of. I have put the changes I am currently considering in the conclusion of this RMT, but all other recommendations are welcomed.

This is a balanced Sandstorm team, with a defensive core of Gastrodon and Skarmory to deal with Rain teams and Sand teams respectively. I guess the main sweeper of the team is Excadrill, with Salamence executing Skarmory and Gliscor, and Celebi removing Rotom-W and other bulky waters to pave the way for Excadrill's sweep. Offensive Rain threats are kept at bay by Gastrodon, who walls most of them with ease, and Scarf Tyranitar, who can OHKO the genies with Stone Edge and exterminate fleeing Starmies with Pursuit. Other defensive threats are generally dealt with by Whirlwinding around to rack up hazard damage and then just dealing as much damage with Salamence before bringing in Excadrill to clean up.


Under The Microscope

Tyranitar (F) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly nature (+Spe, -SAtk)
- Stone Edge
- Pursuit
- Superpower
- Stealth Rock

Although Tyranitar is most commonly seen Mixed this generation, ScarfTar remains by far my favourite set, and although it doesn't catch people by surprise as well as it did a couple of months ago, it still remains a potent revenge-killer for the threats this team has problems with.

With a Choice Scarf around its neck, Tyranitar outspeeds Thundurus and Tornadus- a common duo on Rain teams, and disposes of them with Stone Edge. Non-scarf Terrakion are also outsped and taken care of by Superpower. Despite the lack of Crunch on the set, Tyranitar still plays mind-games with Latios, Gengar and Starmie, who are all OHKOd on the switch by Pursuit. Although Crunch is often missed, Pursuit has much better utility and allows me to at least get some damage on the aforementioned threats regardless of whether they stay in or switch. The reason this Tyranitar lacks Crunch is because of the presence of Stealth Rock, which is not commonly seen on ScarfTar. Stealth Rock is here because I really have nowhere else I want to put it. Although Skarmory is a decent user, it rarely finds time to set-up both Spikes and Stealth Rock, and it would require ditching one of the other 3 moves, which are all essential to the team's functioning. I could also replace Celebi's Recover with Stealth Rock, or replace Celebi's set altogether with a defensive set, but Nasty Plot has been working great for me so far so I'm pretty reluctant to change it. In addition, Stealth Rock on Tyranitar has turned out to be a great asset in a number of battles, where the opponent sees SR and incorrectly assumes it to be the mixed set, which means they more-often-than-not don't keep Ferrothorn and Skarmory in vs Ttar fearing Fire Blast. Bluffing the Mixed set also means ScarfTar can then revenge-kill Thundurus, Latios, Gengar, Starmie and Terrakion much more effectively late-game.

Although Tyranitar has been a fairly recent addition to the team, I've never looked back since replacing Heatran with it. SpDef Heatran was great at countering (the somewhat rare) Sun teams, but it left the team incredibly open to the likes of Choice Band/Swords Dance Terrakion, who could pretty much sweep the team. With Tyranitar, I can now revenge-kill non-scarf Terrakion with Superpower, and also outspeed it With Excadrill due to Sand Rush.

Skarmory (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Spikes
- Brave Bird
- Roost
- Whirlwind

Skarmory forms a great defensive duo with Gastrodon, who takes Fire Blasts and Thunderbolts aimed at Skarmory all day, while Skarmory takes the Grass Knots and other Grass-attacks that Gastrodon despises. On a broader spectrum, Skarmory walls most Sandstorm sweepers and Gastrodon handles the Rain sweepers, meaning that I have most of the metagame's top threats covered between just 2 Pokemon.

Skarmory provides entry hazard support with Spikes alongside Tyranitar's Stealth Rock, which, in conjunction with Whirlwind, helps to wear down Skarmory's common switch-ins, such as Magnezone, Thundurus, and Heatran to make for a potential Celebi (or maybe Salamence) sweep. Although a lot of the top threats this Generation aren't grounded (see: Thundurus, Latios, Dragonite, Balloon Excadrill, Balloon Terrakion), Spikes still has great utility. Brave Bird and Whirlwind are the 2 'filler' moves of the set, but are still pretty much set in stone here as they are both very important. Whirlwind helps rack-up hazard damage to help the sweepers, as well as putting-off Magnezone from wanting to switch-in on Skarmory, and is also useful for getting rid of set-up Pokemon before they get too threatening (for example, Rock Polish Terrakion, DD Dragonite, SD Scizor, SD Excadrill, SD Landorus, CM Reuniclus, and SD Gliscor). Brave Bird means that Skarmory isn't complete Taunt-bait, as well as meaning that I don't get swept by last-Pokemon Excadrill with its Balloon still intact. Brave Bird also deals decent damage to the common Grass-types in OU, including Celebi and Virizion who are 2HKOd and OHKOd respectively with Spikes and Stealth Rock, even with no Atk investment. Although I'm sure there is a more efficient and tailored EV spread out there than the one I am currently using, this is the one I started with and it seems to have been working fine. Since I don't have Taunt, the only reason I would really want Speed EVs would be to outspeed opposing Skarmorys that do have Taunt, but in my opinion its not worth taking away from Skarmory's Defensive capabilities for the sake of a single layer of Spikes before I get Taunted afterwards and get locked into Brave Bird. I opted for a Physically defensive set here as opposed to a Specially defensive set, as most Sandstorm sweepers attack on the Physical side of the attacking spectrum, and although this EV Spread means Skarmory doesn't take Draco Meteors from Latios and friends well at all, the -2 SpA means Tyranitar can switch-in relatively safely and Pursuit / Stone Edge the user.

Gastrodon (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 20 SAtk / 236 SDef
Calm nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Toxic
- Recover

Gastrodon can single-handedly wall the 5/6 members of the common rain team, only really fearing Ferrothorn which Skarmory can get free Spikes up against. Gastrodon acts as the team's main counter to Thundurus, as it really can't touch me with any of its common attacks and Gastrodon just removes it with Ice Beams.

In earlier iterations of the team, I had an Unaware Quagsire in this spot, but I've never regretted replacing it. Although they share the same typing and they both counter Thundurus, Gastrodon's Storm Drain ability is just too much to pass up, allowing to to act as a counter to Starmie and Azumarill on top of the aforementioned genie. Despite the defensively-inclined EV spread, Storm Drain and Rain-boosted Scald's really pack a punch, and Gastrodon gets a lot of opportunities to fire them off against Rain teams trying to get rid of Tyranitar and Excadrill. With its secondary Ground-typing, Gastrodon has great defensive psynergy with Skarmory, taking on the Thunderbolts and Fire Blasts that Skarmory hates with ease due to resistance and brilliant Special Defense. The lack of Earth Power on the set means that Gastrodon can't really hit Rain sweepers back once it switches in, but she forces a load of switches so doesn't really need an attack to hit them anyway, letting Toxic damage, Stealth Rock and Spikes do all the work. Although Rapid Spin Starmie is annoying, I can just switch to Tyranitar on a predicted Rapid Spin (which isn't really too difficult since Starmie isn't going to be doing anything else to Gastrodon) and Pursuit it away before setting up hazards. Toxic is the filler move on the set, as is here mainly as a way to hit CM Latias on the switch-in, putting a timer on it so it can't really do much, unless it has the rare Refresh.

Celebi @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 216 HP / 252 SAtk / 40 Spe
Modest nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Nasty Plot
- Giga Drain
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Recover / Thunder Wave

I had a tough time deciding between Celebi and Virizion on this team, but decided on Celebi due to its ability to boost its Special Attack faster with Nasty Plot, and also because it provides another important Water-resist for the team. Nasty Plot Celebi is one of the team's powerhouses, with decent coverage between just Giga Drain and Hidden Power [Fire], which only misses out on Heatran and Dragons. Celebi works alongside Gastrodon to efficiently and consistently beat Rain teams, powering through them once Toxic and Hazard damage has racked up.

The choice for the 3rd moveslot is always a difficult one for Nasty Plot Celebi, but Hidden Power [Fire] works well enough. Other options were Hidden Power [Ice] and Earth Power. Hidden Power [Ice] allows Celebi to hit Dragonite, Latios, Latias, Latias and Salamence super effectively, although it can't really stay in against any of them if they manage to switch-in on a Giga Drain, Nasty Plot or Recover. Earth Power gives Celebi an option to hit Heatran, but Heatran commonly hold Air Balloon making Earth Power useless until I break it, and Celebi is outsped with the current EV Spread anyway. Heatran is handled well enough by Gastrodon, and can be revenge-killed by Tyranitar and Excadrill (providing the Air Balloon is broken), there isn't really any need for Earth Power.

The last moveslot was also a difficult choice. At one point I was using Thunder Wave there, crippling Latias, Latios, Dragonite, Salamence and Heatran switch-ins, all of which commonly switch into Nasty Plot Celebi. However, without Recover, Celebi gets worn down very quickly by even resisted attacks, in particular Rotom-W's Hydro Pumps, Thunders and Volt Switches as well as Politoed's Hydro Pumps and Scalds.

Excadrill (F) @ Air Balloon
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Rapid Spin

I hate Excadrill so much, but it is just brilliant at what it does. Excadrill is the offensive Rapid Spinner of the team, getting rid of Stealth Rock, Spikes and Toxic Spikes which Gastrodon, Celebi and Tyranitar despise. Excadrill causes loads of switches, giving him a lot of chances to pull out a Rapid Spin, mostly on switches to Skarmory or Gliscor. Starmie was the only other option here, but I opted for Excadrill due to its greater offensive capability with Swords Dance, making him a great spinner early-game and threatening sweeper late-game, something Starmie can't really match.

Excadrill acts as yet another check to Thundurus, beating non-Focus Blast variants one-on-one in both Rain and Sand, and outspeeding all sets when I have the weather advantage, OHKOing with Rock Slide. Its immunity to Thunder Wave means it is one of the few offensive checks to Thundurus that doesn't get crippled as it takes it down. Excadrill also acts as a well needed check to non-balloon and non-Rock Polish Terrakion, easily outspeeding even Scarf sets and OHKOing with Earthquake. Deciding between Rock Slide and Frustration was somewhat difficult, but I decided on Rock Slide for the flinch chance, and also so that Excadrill isn't left completely hopeless against Skarmory. Although Frustration is more powerful against Gliscor and Lati@s, they are often already weakened sufficiently by Salamence/Gastrodon and Tyranitar respectively before Gliscor comes in to finish off the job.

Air Balloon is the item of choice here over Life Orb because of Excadrill's role as the team's Rapid Spinner. With Air Balloon, Excadrill has guaranteed Spikes immunity the first time it switches in, which is important as it means it will be healthier when it tries to sweep later in the battle. Air Balloon means that Gliscor has a much harder time countering Excadrill, particularly if it has already been weakened by other members of the team.

Salamence (F) @ Life Orb
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 116 Atk / 216 SAtk / 176 Spe
Naive nature (+Spe, -SDef)
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
- Brick Break
- Roost

Salamence has been very overlooked this generation due the presence of the other dragons taking up its niches. Latios has a much more powerful Draco Meteor, and Dragonite's new ability Multiscale and access to ExtremeSpeed makes it a better Dragon Dancer. However, MixMence remains just as threatening as it was last generation, retaining its ability to hit hard on the special side without getting walled by Tyranitar and Blissey, something Latios can't consistently match.

Salamence does a great job of removing Excadrill's counters early- and mid-game, OHKOing even the most Specially defensive Skarmory most of the time with Stealth Rock up, and OHKOing standard Swords Dance Gliscor 100% of the time with Stealth Rock up. With Excadrill spinning Stealth Rock away, and with Roost in the 4th slot, Salamence has surprising survivability, even more so with Intimidate buffing his ability to take physical hits, such as Close Combats, Drain Punches and Mach Punches from the various OU Fighting-types. Brick Break is the filler attack of choice here, hitting Tyranitar and Blissey harder than Earthquake while still hitting Heatran for around 60%. The EV spread means Salamence can outspeed all neutral-natured Base 90 Speed Pokemon, focusing the rest of the remaining EVs on power, since Salamence is acting a wallbreaker as opposed to a sweeper. Although Draco Meteor's power doesn't match Latios', it is still incredibly powerful, and very few Pokemon can switch-in on a Draco Meteor and then take a second attack from Salamence, making it a very efficient wall-breaker. Salamence brings a few nice resistances to the team, including Fighting, Fire and Water in particular. As Salamence resists Grass, Fire and is immune to Ground-type attacks, he makes a very good switch-in for Nasty Plot Celebi, who is pretty annoying for the team to face otherwise especially considering the lack of Crunch on Tyranitar.

Conclusion
This team has been pretty good for me so far, but there are still a couple of weaknesses I need help ironing out:

Latios - He is pretty tough for this team to face. Since Skarmory needs to be heavily invested in HP and Def to handle common Sand sweepers, his SpDef is left pretty lackluster. Similarly, although Excadrill resists Draco Meteor he can't take them well at all, and is easily OHKOd by Surf. Tyranitar has trouble switching-in, especially if the opponent has Spikes up, and without Crunch he can't KO if the opponent decides to keep Latios in. Gastrodon can stall out the Life Orb set (and the Specs set to an extent if I don't switch-in on Draco Meteor), but can't really do much in return bar fire-off weak Ice Beams. Excadrill outspeeds in Sandstorm but has to pray for flinches to take it out unless it is sufficiently weakened.

Reuniclus - The Trick Room set is particularly tough to handle, as it can then outspeed everything on my team and deal loads of damage to everything. Celebi resists both Psychic and Focus Blast but falls to the sets with Shadow Ball, and also loses if they get a SpDef drop. My best bet is to try and stall out Trick Room with Gastrodon and then get some damage in with Tyranitar and hope they go straight for Focus Blast and not set-up Trick Room again, or just pray for Focus Blast misses.

Terrakion - The Double Dance set is the worst one to face because after a Rock Polish it outspeeds Excadrill, and after a Swords Dance it can OHKO everything (assuming LO). Luckily, it is very difficult for Terrakion to set-up both Swords Dance and Rock Polish, since the only opportunity it gets to set-up is against Tyranitar locked into Stone Edge, Stealth Rock or Superpower. I normally switch into Skarmory on the set-up move, which is normally Rock Polish if they know Tyranitar is Choice Scarfed, and then Whirlwind it out. Last Pokemon Terrakion is very annoying since it can't be Whirlwinded. My best bet is to get damage with Brave Bird while it sets up and then make smart switches with Salamence to spam Intimidate to the point where it can't KO Celebi with Stone Edge so that I can Giga Drain to finish it off. If they don't have both Swords Dance and Rock Polish, they are much easier to handle. Excadrill can outspeed Swords Dance sets and KO (assuming no Balloon), and Tyranitar can Superpower, although neither can switch-in on Close Combat. Skarmory can Roost against Rock Polish sets to rack-up Defense drops and then finish it off with Brave Bird.

One of the other problems with the team is the lack of Ice resists, with a 2x and 4x weakness. However, Gastrodon and Tyranitar have the Special Defense to take Ice Beams, and Skarmory has the Defense to take Ice Shards, with the only common user being Mamoswine who is hard walled by Skarmory already. Although a couple of resists would be very nice, I've never found myself in a position where I am about to lose because I have no resistance to Ice-type attacks.

The main change I am considering are to switch Tyranitar to a Chople set, which helps against both Calm Mind and Trick Room Reuniclus, although this leaves the team much more open to Rain teams utilising Tornadus, Thundurus and Starmie since Gastrodon would be put under a lot of pressure to try and wall all 3 one after the other, especially if either Thundurus or Starmie are packing Grass Knot. SubDisable Gengar would also become much more problematic for the team to handle. The second change I am currently considering is to replace one of the team members for a Specially Defensive Swords Dance Scizor, who would help against Terrakion and Latios and bring priority to the team, which is never a bad thing.

Thanks for reading.

 

[AB2]

Hey man, this is a really awesome team. I love the use of the underrated threat of old mixmence and Excadrill supporting it and your entire team with rapid spin. Only a few small changes here as this team is really quite solid. Stealth rocks is out of place on Tyranitar. You really should be running Crunch on it so that you have the ability to trap Lati@s, Starmie, Gengar, and other specially based threats much easier. Since Tyranitar running a full choice scarf set makes you lose your stealth rock pokemon. I would swap Celebi's set to the life orb variant with stealth rocks. This will allow you to at least have stealth rocks on a pokemon in your team so that you can run a full choice scarf set on Tyranitar. Gastrodon pretty much hard counters most bulky water types in the tier, so celebi becoming a bit more frail with a life orb set isn't really a worry as you have both drizzle and water types checked with ease. A set with Stealth Rocks | Leaf Storm | Hidden Power [Fire] | Recover would work best with the EV spread that you have now.

This is a really solid team. Good Luck.

 

[IronBullet]

Hey bro,

So Scizor pretty much patches up everything on your threat list. The most replaceable Pokemon is Celebi, seeing as Gastrodon handles nearly everything on rain by itself. Ferrothorn, one of the only Pokemon on rain that threatens Gastrodon, is setup bait for Scizor and Skarmory. A Specially Defensive set on Scizor would be ideal, giving it amazing defensive synergy with Gastrodon and being able to tank Draco Meteors from Latios and Focus Blasts from Reuniclus with ease. The standard SD set with EVs 252 HP | 40 Atk | 216 Sp Def with an Adamant nature and a moveset of Bullet Punch | Bug Bite | Swords Dance | Roost will work well. You can replace Roost with Superpower to help weaken Skarmory for Excadrill, but it loses some survivability. Life Orb or Lefties are both viable options, Life Orb is better with Roost while Lefties is better without.

If you do switch to Scizor it becomes even more important to win weather wars against Rain, so a more defensive Tyranitar set would be better. Chople Tar still takes care of Latios and Gengar, but now has greater survivability. Excadrill already accomplishes the revenge killing duties that Tar could perform before, so you're not missing out on much there. A good moveset would be Stealth Rock | Fire Blast | Pursuit | Superpower, but Crunch for a more reliable STAB than Pursuit or Ice Beam to lure in and KO Gliscor. Fiddle with the EVs as you wish, it's important to have a good amount of special defense and enough in special attack to OHKO Gliscor if you choose Ice Beam.

Good luck!