help cement my Sandroom team (almost finished)

[The boy]

Alright hopefully this doesnt get locked because this is like version 5 or so of this team and i have pretty much most bases covered and a very good understanding of VGC and why this works. This 50 game play test led me to a 41-9 record. I chalk up maybe 6 of those to legit losses, others to me being careless and not really paying attention. I used to have nihilego as my TR setter but i gave in a P2 has faired much better. So lets get into it.

Gigalith @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Sand Stream
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 188 Atk / 68 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Heavy Slam
- Rock Slide
- Wide Guard
- Protect

The staple and the sand setter/weather negator. He does what he does and he does it well. Didnt use EQ much so i swapped it for protect. Turns out i dont use wide guard all that often but it does save me sometimes. I got the evs from someone on smogon. Ive been using him for a while and these evs seem to work out pretty well so s/o to that guy. Weakness policy allows for pretty decently strong rock slides and heavy slams take out a good amount of mons at +2.

Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 188 Atk / 68 SpD
Brave Nature
- Shadow Bone
- Protect
- Bonemerang
- Flare Blitz

typical Maro, evs from the same guy on smogon. No 0 iv in speed because i want to outspeed the other TR A-maros but underspeed the adamant ones. Basically took the EVs because he said that it will survive a modest LO Lele psychic in grassy terrain. Still gets the job done.

Metagross @ Steelium Z
Ability: Clear Body
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Jolly Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Zen Headbutt
- Hammer Arm
- Protect

replaced my magnezone with him because he wipes the floor with tapus (lele specifically) and also handles kartana and other weak to fighting mons with hammer arm. dont know if i should run bullet punch instead of zen headbutt or not.

Tapu Bulu @ Choice Band
Ability: Grassy Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Nature's Madness
- Horn Leech
- Stone Edge

typical banded bulu. Horn leech + wood hammer because horn leech disposes of grass weak mons w/o recoil. Dont even find stone edge or natures madness to be clicked 10% of the time combined.

Gastrodon @ Leftovers
Ability: Storm Drain
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 124 Def / 140 SpA
Quiet Nature
- Clear Smog
- Protect
- Scald
- Ice Beam

Clear smog is very underrated. has come in handy multiple times. Other than that, typical gastrodon.

Porygon2 @ Eviolite
Ability: Download
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 156 Def / 36 SpA / 60 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Recover
- Trick Room

Again typical p2. has taken me over the top. not fragile like nihilego, and can still lend a hand in taking down mons.

I dont have much trouble with any specific pokemons or teams. Just kinda want to sharpen up my squad with your guys opinion. ALthough, if i had to pick a core torkoal + gant or mimikyu + snorlax gives me a little bit of issues.

Another question i have is items. specifically z-crystal. Just kind of threw it on metagross.

thanks for the help, looking forward to the critiques!

 

[bp139]

Overall this is a pretty solid team. I played over ten games with it and it did fairly well. The first change I would make is to make is to make Gastodon the East form because that one is much pink and brown one. Also, the metagross is jolly nature on the forum, I assume that's suppose to be adament. Also, your gastrodon didn't have 0 speed IVs which I assume was also a mistake.

In my opinion, I didn't think that Gigalith was very good. I couldn't get him to work very well. I know that was the point of the team, but I think you could improve the team by selecting a different pokemon. I would run max attack on Gigalith too. I think with trick room teams, it's important to use those four turns of trick room to the max. That means doing as much damage as possible.

I also didn't like clear smog on Gastrodon. I switched it with mud bomb. I would also consider replacing it entirely with Milotic. The competitive would be very helpful for your team.

With Tapu Bulu, I would change Nature's Madness for Super Power. I don't think this change is super important though.

On metagross, I would run bullet punch instead of hammer arm. Hammer arm isn't that helpful and I found priority to be very helpful on this team.

On porygon2 I would consider running Protect or Tri-Attack. I would still need to do more testing to say for sure but I didn't think that recover was super useful.

Overall, I thought the team was very good. I worked really well for me. Also, you should feel free to take a look at my team here.

 

[Mystical]

Ay, I like this team a lot. Sand + TR has always been a favorite of mine, and I think this is one of the best teams I've seen with the combo. I playtested this team a bit on Showdown, so I have some critiques:

Gigalith: First of all, this guy is amazing. I was on the fence about Gigalith at first, but this thing is great. He's very bulky with Sand up, is incredibly fast under TR, and hits like a flying ice cream truck. I have no idea what the EVs do, either, but I didn't feel the need to change them. This guy is definitely the highlight of this team. No suggestions here.

Marowak: The standard Wak worked pretty well for me on this team. It's standard for a reason, I guess. No suggestions there either.

Metagross/Tapu Bulu: I switched the items on Metagross and Tapu Bulu and got better results. I found that Metagross's damage output was always a bit disappointing and that Tapu Bulu likes to Protect from time to time, so I went with Grassium-Z Bulu and CB Metagross. This could just come down to a matter of playstyle, though, and I think both could work either way.
And you should definitely run Adamant or Brave on Metagross. I ran Brave with a 0 Spe IV, and it worked well.

I also didn't like clear smog on Gastrodon. I switched it with mud bomb. I would also consider replacing it entirely with Milotic. The competitive would be very helpful for your team.

I agree that Milotic is a much better fit for your team here. You're not incredibly Water/Rain-weak, so Gastrodon doesn't help much in most situations. I've found that double Intimidate is also very common this gen, and your team as is doesn't perform well against it. Adding Milotic makes that problem go away completely.

Porygon2: Porygon2 here is good. Definitely keep Recover on it; that's a given. I replaced Tbolt with Shadow Ball since Tbolt doesn't really do anything and Shadow Ball OHKOs most Marowak. The EVs seem OK here, but could you explain what they do?

I really like this team. I won one of those 2am VGC tourneys while I was playing around with it on Showdown, so I can attest to the effectiveness of the team (I doubt that that's actually a significant accomplishment, but I think this is a good team nonetheless). This is the variation that I was running on Showdown: http://pastebin.com/uStyDkPe

 

[The boy]

Mystical bp139 thank you guys very much for helping my team along. I think I have a very solid team also and you guys are only solidifying it.

A couple things...
-why the pink gastrodon? Purely preference?
-I was thinking about adding Nilotic as I run into it a decent amount and like what it does... any set suggestions?
- porygon was copy and pasted from trainertower so I don't know the evs.
- I like hammer arm for kartana If I choice band him I might add it. Would replacing zen headbutt be all that bad?
- I chose jolly meta for a specific reason outside of trick room I think it was for mimikyu but I forget


Again, thanks for the help! Hopefully this puts me over the top! Come bank release I'll probably have some edits and do another one. Until then I'll be checking your guys teams out first and foremost

 

[Mystical]

Mystical bp139 thank you guys very much for helping my team along. I think I have a very solid team also and you guys are only solidifying it.

A couple things...
-why the pink gastrodon? Purely preference?
-I was thinking about adding Nilotic as I run into it a decent amount and like what it does... any set suggestions?
- porygon was copy and pasted from trainertower so I don't know the evs.
- I like hammer arm for kartana If I choice band him I might add it. Would replacing zen headbutt be all that bad?
- I chose jolly meta for a specific reason outside of trick room I think it was for mimikyu but I forget


Again, thanks for the help! Hopefully this puts me over the top! Come bank release I'll probably have some edits and do another one. Until then I'll be checking your guys teams out first and foremost

lel gastrodon color preferences

I was running a Milotic from another Tapu Bulu team. The idea for that particular Milotic was that you would bait a Marowak/Intimidate switch-in with Tapu Bulu and then switch to Milotic. The set I had is basically never 2HKOd by 188 Atk Wak under Grassy Terrain and takes laughable damage from most Intimidate users, so it works pretty well. It's in the pastebin on my other post.

You might want to try experimenting with P2's EVs a bit if that's the case, since this Porygon2 might not do exactly what your team needs. Maybe EV it to survive two Sacred Swords from Kartana, for example. Kartana can be kinda problematic for this team, by the way, but I can only think of one time where I wasn't able to play around it effectively while testing. It is something to consider though.

About Metagross, you probably picked Jolly to outspeed Adamant 0 Spe Tapu Bulu outside of TR (since he's the only mon between a 90 and a 99 speed stat that matters to Metagross), but it would be better to run Adamant with 212 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Spe if that's what you want. This way you still hit that 96 Spe, but you also maximize your damage output. Definitely keep Zen Headbutt; Tapu Lele is very common and Psychic Terrain boosted Zen Headbutt is very abusable. Metagross is also a decent check to Tapu Lele (Psychic + Shadow Ball doesn't KO without a boosting item), so you have plenty of incentive to bring Metagross against Lele teams. If you want to run a CB Metagross just replace Protect since it's useless with CB.

Glad to help! Testing other teams is a pretty good way to really familiarize yourself with the metagame, I think, so I'm happy to do it (and as soon as I get off my arse and make my own team I'll let you know hahaha).

 

[The boy]

Mystical i can not for the life of me figure out how to work with milotic. is hydro pump necessary? im running with Sub, so i was thinking toxic.
bout to start the next playtest. thanks again

 

[Mystical]

Mystical i can not for the life of me figure out how to work with milotic. is hydro pump necessary? im running with Sub, so i was thinking toxic.
bout to start the next playtest. thanks again

It's only useful against teams that carry at least one Intimidate user (preferably more than one). Gigalith, Marowak, and Tapu Bulu are all bait for Intimidate, so if you feel like your opponent is going to switch in their Intimidate user, you can call the switch and send in Milotic. One way or another you want Milotic to be on the field when your opponent sends in their Intimidate user. I actually ran Sub on a different Milotic last month, but it was only useful for avoiding Leech Seeds and Toxics, so I switched to Hydro Pump. I find that the extra damage from Hydro Pump is useful if you don't get the Intimidate boost right away, but that slot could realistically be whatever you want. Scald, Ice Beam, and Recover are all pretty important, so I would have a hard time justifying not running any of those.

 

[blarajan]

Hey I have to lock this temporarily until you complete this assignment

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/mandatory-team-building-homework-assignment.3589392/