Ok Let me try this again, HG Team Help?

[Soda4Matt]

This is my first team here on smogon forums, been looking at smogon website for awhile now, really like the tips it gives for making teams here.

Any suggestions to this team would be greatly appreciated.
Additions/Take aways.

Starmie (Fast SpA)
Natural Cure
Modest
Recover/Rapid Spin
Thunderbolt
Psychic
Surf
Choice Scarf(?)
252SpA/252Spe

Wasnt real sure for the item on this one, I wanted Starmie to be a fast revenge killer, to be able to switch in, kill and switch out. With STAB in Psychic and Surf, and also having a Thunderbolt to take out any water or flying types. The Rapid Spin was if i needed to take out spikes..etc. Recover was in case a better item came to my attention, so I was not limited to using a recover then having to switch back out. EV's in SpA and Spe allow it to revenge kill successfully. And quick switchins and switch outs allow it to take little damage from Tyranitars Sandstream.

Swampert (Def Tank)
Torrent
Relaxed
Stealth Rock
Avalanche
Waterfall
Earthquake
Leftovers
248Hp/216Def/44SpD

(Relaxed for use of Avalanche.) With Leftovers and a weakness only to Grass, along with STAB Waterfall and Earthquake, can dish out heavy damage while taking a few hits. Grass weakness is easily stopped by switching to Clefable or Scizor, depending on the Grass being SpA high or Atk high.

Tyranitar (Bulky Atk)
Sandstream
Jolly
Dragon Dance
Crunch
Rock Slide
Earthquake
Expert Belt
252Atk/252Spe

Always wanted to try out a DDTyranitar, I thought giving it Jolly, it would help if it is able to set up a few DDs that it could easily Sweep through a team with good STAB and a Speed Priority. I chose Rock Slide because Im not too lucky with low accuracy attacks, plus i like the extra PP and flinch possibility on a DD Set. Expert Belt was chosen because there are many types weak to Dark and Rock, and an extra Super Attack boost along with DD, works great.
Sandstream helps alot with TTar giving boost in SpD and I have Swampert, Clefable, and Scizor who all are immune to it.

Clefable (SpA, SpD)
Wonderguard
Modest
Soft Boiled
Calm Mind
Ice Beam
Thunderbolt
Life Orb
160Hp/252SpA/90Spe

I really like this set up for Clefable, Wonderguard is amazing with Life Orb, and a Semi Sandstorm Team. By using calm mind and getting hp back with soft boiled, makes a great threat to SpA pokemon (because of the SpD boost from Calm Mind), while gaining high SpA at the same time, with two common weakness attacks thunderbolt and ice beam. It can easily sweep if allowed to set up.

Gengar
Levitate
Timid
Protect
Shadow Ball
Focus Blast
Confuse Ray/Energy Ball/Trick (Not really sure for last attack)
Focus Sash
4Def/252SpA/252Spe

Protect is nice to scouting out moves of opponent, to see if it should stay in or not.
Focus Sash for a last chance to K0
Focus Blast for quickly taking out a Blissey before it is allowed to set up, or taking out a common Tyrannitar with 4x weakness to fighting.
Shadow Ball, powerful STAB and main attack.
Was thinking because of low defenses, a confuse ray would boost any chances of Gengar surviving a few more turns, along with a Protect and Focus Sash.
Energy Ball would also be nice to take out a Swampert/Quagsire or anyothers due to lack of other grass type moves on my team.

For last not really sure what to use, atm i have..

Scizor
Technician
Adamant
Roost
Aerial Ace (For taking out Fighting and Grass Types).
Bullet Punch
Uturn
Muscle Band
252 Atk/248Hp/8Spe

Good bulky atk with healing capabilities. and weakness only to fire
Along with Muscle Band Scizor can really put a dent in any low Def opponents.
U-Turn is for Swapping out against any Psychic or Dark and bringing in Tyranitar to finish with STAB Crunch or a STAB Rock Slide.
Good Priority Bullet Punch along with High Attack, Muscle Band, can easily do quick hard damage.

The basis of this team I made was to create a team with a large portion of the pokemon to have very little weaknesses, along with movesets that take out very common opponents. Along with a Semi Sandstorm team basis.

 

[2sly4u]

Aerial Ace reaches 90 BP with technician.

No one is rating your teams because your descriptions are horrible; we can't understand the logic behind your team choices or how they help your overall strategy. Look at some of the other team rates; all the ones with responses have at least a solid paragraph on each pokemon, and usually more. Here's a link to my RMT I made a few weeks ago:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3455758

Don't try to make your team itself look like mine, just format your post so it looks organized and presentable. There are other acceptable formats; I just used mine since I didn't want to use someone else's team without their permission. You can't expect people to put time into rating your team if you don't put time into your post.

 

[Soda4Matt]

Ok, my bad, thanks for the advice, will get to that.

 

[Soda4Matt]

This a little better? Hope it helps some.

 

[2sly4u]

This a little better? Hope it helps some.

Yeah, much better. I'll give you a rate in the morning :)

 

[Imanalt]

ok, so no offense, but this team is not great to start with.
however, a couple simple things that will help you:
1. switch scizor to using choice band, with moveset bullet punch/uturn/pursuit/superpower
2. switch tyranitar to either a lum berry or a babiri berry. Lum lets you set up on zapdos or cresselia, whereas babiri lets you survive a scizor's bullet punch. If youre running babiri, change your moveset to dd/fire punch/stone edge/crunch.
3. If you want to run gengar w/ protect (which i love) i would suggest using mysticgar set: timid @ life orb, 252 speed, 4 def, 252 satk, protect | shadow ball | focus blast | hp fire.
Hp fire is on there to take out scizors trying to pursuit. (which you should have scouted using protect)
4. i see a real grass weakness, and i cont see starmie being amazingly helpful for you, i would suggest leading swampert and replacing it with a defensive celebi:
bold @ lefties 252 HP / 220 Def / 36 Spe
~ Grass Knot
~ Recover
~ Thunder Wave / Leech Seed
~ Hidden Power Fire / Earth Power / Hidden Power Ice

5. As this takes off your one scarf poke, and an offensive team without a scarfer generally is vulnerable, i would suggest replacing clefable with scarfheatran
naive @choice scarf 252 satk/252 speed/4 sdef
fire blast | earth power | explosion | HP grass
this also gives you a fwg core :D

 

[Soda4Matt]

Would love to get heatran and celebi but have no way of getting them :P

 

[B-Zard]

Hey soda4matt, if you make the adjustments drorrock suggested it would be a pretty good sandstorm team since only Celebi and Gengar are unaffected by sandstorm and they are good supporters to your team. I wouldn't go at all for a DD Ttar since almost every team can deal with it since it is extremely vulnerable to priority like CB BP Scizor and Mach Punch Infernape and since these are pretty common it means that DD Ttar has trouble of getting up a few DD's. I also think Lum berry isn't a good item here since it only works once and well most of the time you still get the status if your team for example has toxic spikes up meaning your toxic status cleares, but if you're facing a Cress with Twave you have a problem. I would change Ttar's set to this one since I faced it a few times and really caught me off guard:

Tyranitar @ Expert Belt
Ability: Sand Stream
Hasty Nature, 252 att, 16 spatt, 240 speed
- Stealth Rock/ Filler
- Pursuit
- Fire Blast/ Flamethrower
- Superpower

When I faced this one with my Rotom it trapped me with pursuit so I went out into Scizor because I thought it was scarfed but then it went for Fire Blast and killed off my Scizor. This set can be really surprising and can hit a lot of things for at least neutral damage. Stealth Rock is there if you are using a lead without Stealth Rock like your Starmie. If you are planning to go for another lead like your Swampert you can change it to whatever you want, maybe Stone Edge to hit Gyara and Zapdos or Substitute but yeah this are just suggestions and you are the one who decides it.

Hope I helped you and good luck with your team!

 

[verbatim]

You must show me where you found a Wonder Guard Clefable.

(It should read Magic Guard)

Also,

Scizor
Technician
Adamant
Roost
Aerial Ace (For taking out Fighting and Grass Types).
Bullet Punch
Uturn
Muscle Band
252 Atk/248Hp/8Spe

Good bulky atk with healing capabilities. and weakness only to fire
Along with Muscle Band Scizor can really put a dent in any low Def opponents.
U-Turn is for Swapping out against any Psychic or Dark and bringing in Tyranitar to finish with STAB Crunch or a STAB Rock Slide.
Good Priority Bullet Punch along with High Attack, Muscle Band, can easily do quick hard damage.

Muscle band doesn't increase your attack, it helps you increase your ev's (which are already at maximum). I recommend running one of the sets found on Scizor's smogon pokedex page.

As a rule of thumb, most pokemon you should run should be one of the sets listed in the pokedex, or a variation of one (until you have had significant experience in generation five)

 

[Soda4Matt]

Yea my Bad, it was Magic Guard. Sorry to disappoint you, :P

And i have had trouble trying to set up the DDTar, Usually gets killed before i can set up even 2 DDs.

Also how would i go about getting a Celebi or Heatran, i know Celebi is a Special Event, and Heatran requires a DDP Game.

 

[B-Zard]

Yea my Bad, it was Magic Guard. Sorry to disappoint you, :P

And i have had trouble trying to set up the DDTar, Usually gets killed before i can set up even 2 DDs.

Also how would i go about getting a Celebi or Heatran, i know Celebi is a Special Event, and Heatran requires a DDP Game.

About Ttar read my post 2 posts above yours since I already warned you changing DD Ttar to another set.
And about Celebi and Heatran 1: buy action replay, 2: ask people in ask thread if they want to do it for you.

For Gengar and Scizor just go for the sets drorrock suggested. Since with Gengar protect can scout and the other moves cover each other pretty nicely and for Scizor a Choice Band is a much better item than Muscle Band.

 

[2sly4u]

Hi Soda4Matt, sorry for the delay.

While your team synergy is actually decent for a first try, and you have ways to beat both stall and offensive teams (Clefable and T-Tar respectively). However, most of your move and item choices are perplexing to say the least.

Let's begin with your items. For starters, Focus Sash Gengar is totally useless in Sandstorm since his Sash will be broken by the residual damage. I would change his item to Leftovers or Life Orb. Muscle Band is almsot as useless, as the power boost is a pathetic 10%. I would simply go for the standard CB Scizor, though a Life Orb is just as viable if you want the freedom to change moves. If you want to use DDTar, you almost need to carry a Babri Berry due to Scizor's prevalence. Babri Berry reduces the damage done by super effective Steel-type moves, letting you survive a Bullet Punch and KO back. If you're going to use Scizor, then you don't really need a scarfed revenge-killer; you can change Starmie's item to Leftovers or Choice Specs, giving her more utility or Wallbreaking potential respectively.

Now for movesets. Starmie practically needs Ice Beam; otherwise she can't reliably take on the omnipresent Dragons. I would get rid of Psychic, which has horrible coverage in OU. If you opt for a choice item, Recover is useless since you need to switch out after using it. I would run Grass Knot in Recover's slot instead. Similarly, Tyranitar needs Fire Punch to handle Scizor, as he can't OHKO otherwise. Also, give serious consideration to Stone Edge over Rock Slide, as it turns many 2HKOs into OHKOs. Gengar's moveset is really odd; If you aren't running a Substitute variant (and you shouldn't because of SandStorm, your best bet is Shadow Ball/Focus Blast/HP Fire/Thunderbolt. Scizor's moveset is fine, but if you opt for a Choice Band replace Roost with Superpower.

Clefable should be running more Defense with a Bold nature, as otherwise she is too physically frail to set up effectively.

There are some other things, but this should give you a push in the right direction; I just don't have time to give this a super-in-depth review. If you'd like one, I'd be more than happy to oblige after Thursday. Just message me and let me know.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

 

[Soda4Matt]

What if I keep clefable modest but throw a Cosmic power on instead of calm mind?

 

[Crona]

Muscle band doesn't increase your attack, it helps you increase your ev's (which are already at maximum).

I thought that was Power Band?
Either way, it's still a bad item to be using.

 

[Imanalt]

What if I keep clefable modest but throw a Cosmic power on instead of calm mind?

Cosmic fable is not just a poke to throw on any team, either switch to running a lot more physical bulk, or remove clefable (view my previous post for a suggestion)

 

[B-Zard]

What if I keep clefable modest but throw a Cosmic power on instead of calm mind?

Just change it to the scarftran set drorrock suggested, seems a good option > Clefable. About Gengar focus sash is indeed useless since your own Ttar's sandstorm breakes it. Maybe you can edit your first post since multiple people suggested adjustments to your team.