OU Part 8: team evolution continued

So I guess the idea continuing from 7 is just how a team evolves, and how edits are incorporated, through testing, the mindset, etc. This was written over 2 years ago so if something is confusing, let me know. Also if anyone wants to fix the links for me, that'd be awesome.


2007 update

Background:
I stopped playing GSC sometime around early 2005, and came back to play for nostalgia’s sake sometime late 2006. The meta has changed quite a bit (mostly died off).

I decided to give the old team a whirl at the urge of Flameout/DWash (if anyone remembers him). To set the scene, the meta now was a bit different. ViL had created a pretty damn good stall-archetype in the form of Snorlax, Miltank, Raikou, Skarmory, and Starmie. Me and Flameout began using Thunder in a competitive setting, first on Dragonite (probably Flameout's signature Pokemon), then on Nidoking, then on the electrics themselves. The extra power was a pretty big plus when hitting Snorlax, and PP wasn't too much of an issue. It grew on me personally, and I started considering it on legitimate teams. HP legends were "officially" banned, which was a pretty annoying hit, but not too bad. Drumlax became a bit more used, Tentacruel a bit less, Charizard a bit less, and I was ready to give my old friend some much needed touchups.

Team-updating process
Again with a grain of salt, but more accurate this time. Because I have a couple of the “inferior” versions saved, which I remember to be “stopping points” en route to the final 2007 team; akin, the team-updating process.

Vaporeon Snorlax Tyranitar Exeggutor Gengar Forretress


The original. I updated Forretress's set a bit and gave it HP Bug over Rapid Spin. People became a bit smarter, and I couldn't just spin all willy nilly without anything to threaten... anything. At this point, I've already indentified Gengar's main role as exploding on Raikou, so Mean Look stayed for that reason. I've had glimpses of changing up Egg's set to a powder one, giving Snorlax more freedom in terms of attack, since LK was no longer exclusive and was instead pretty popular. This made it less appealing for me, but ultimately, LK Snorlax was too good to really pass up. I knew my stall hated it, so playing the other side of the coin, I'd use it.

Vaporeon Snorlax Tyranitar Exeggutor Raikou Forretress


Raikou was a more natural fit at the time. It was really a coin-flip decision whether I kept Gengar or Egg as my primary bait-exploder. But because Raikou was my preferred electric at the time, keeping Egg over Gengar was a no brainer. It was a choice between a ground weakness or a ground resistance AFTER adding a pure electric. Raikou was a p-hazer initially, to take advantage of spikes, but I quickly made it a sleep talker once I realized just how much special hits it ends up having to take. Electrics were more prevalent than ever. Keep in mind the HP legend ban.

Vaporeon Snorlax Tyranitar Exeggutor Zapdos Forretress


As aforementioned, HP legend ban meant Rhydon and Steelix was coming in on Raikou all day, scaring it to death with nothing to do about it. Not to mention, other grounds (most notably Nidoking and Marowak) came in and wreaked havoc. This made the Zapdos substitute in the electric spot a pretty straight forward switch, and while it didn't really help with Rhydon, it certainly helped damage control versus Steelix + spikes, not to mention Nidoking/Marowak "forcing" me to switch.

Vaporeon Snorlax Tyranitar Exeggutor Zapdos Cloyster


The addition of Cloyster was to aid the ground pounding I was receiving. I found out really how ridiculously useful Zapdos was, and how often it seems to stay in play, so the occasional ground was really troublesome, even with Egg and Vap. Forretress was usually just set up bait for grounds anyway, while Cloyster gave me something to scare them with, and an additional "electric bait exploder". I lost the spikes spin war vs starmie, but Toxic made it up somewhat with a bit of prediction.


Zapdos @ Leftovers
- Drill Peck
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Thunder



Cloyster (M) @ Leftovers
- Explosion
- Spikes
- Surf
- Toxic



Snorlax (M) @ Leftovers
- Belly Drum
- Double-Edge
- Lovely Kiss
- Rest


Tyranitar (M) @ Leftovers
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Roar
- Rock Slide



Vaporeon (F) @ Leftovers
- Growth
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Surf



Exeggutor (M) @ Leftovers
- Explosion
- Leech Seed
- Psychic
- Stun Spore


Summary:

These changes were largely inspired by stalls at the time. One of the main things I tried doing was taking the basics of stall, and picking the most offensive variants of their respective roles. Suicune -> Vaporeon as the generic bulky water, Raikou -> Raikou/Zapdos as the electric mainstay, Skarmory -> Tyranitar as the phazer and normal resist, Starmie -> Cloyster as the spiker/spinner/sacrifice slot, Miltank -> Exeggutor as a defensive stop gap, and Snorlax -> Snorlax obviously. It's funny how that worked out. This is a big part of why this team is so ridiculously flexible.

I was a big advocator of drumlax in 2007-2009, since stalls were more prevalent than ever. Drumlax was the one true unstoppable forces in GSC, no matter what you did to it. It was also my firm belief that LK Drumlax was so stupidly broken it'd be offensive for me to use on my "main" team (the stall posted in part 2ish of my guide), so I relegate it to this "second-tier" team. Again, it never really caught on that this second-string scrub team was a lot more fun, a lot more effective, and a lot less bland that the Raikou/S/S/S/Miltank genre.

Regardless, the switch to Zapdos was extremely nice. I lost some of the offensive punch that I had with Gengar, but I made up for it with a more stable, long lasting team. Dropping the EQ weak was also nice. And it was surprising [not really] that vaps found its way into the BL tier, so Zapdos was definitely welcome. Oh, and the whole egg thing as mentioned before.

Tyranitar received a minor change, mostly in response to the rise in popularity of Exeggutors. Eggs were now prepped with Giga Drain pretty often, since Grounds were at its peak without HP legends. Crunch became necessary for me to get some damage in. Moreover, the invention of Growltanks led to a previously non-existing problem of being hardwalled instead of free setup. Crunch + Pursuit led to some nice damage on Miltank. Even more importantly, I realized Pursuit + double damage Pursuit didn't cut it as far as killing Misdreavus/Gengar goes, and Misdreavus/Gengar alive, even with 1 HP, is no good for my main form of offense: LK Drumlax.
Egg was relegated to a more support role than ever, with double status. This was when I realized I didn't so much as had to explode on the electrics persay, but I could merely paralyze them, which gave Vap a pretty good chance at beat them on its own. Furthermore, Snorlax switching into Egg really forced my hand before, when I either had to Explode on the spot, or risk being down +1/+2 to curselax. Leech Seed gave me something to do against them. It didn't hurt that seed + Psychics did work against a paralyzed Skarm. Again, this defensive thinking was influenced by Miltank's role.

I notice though, that vap became more and more of a solo player, and that its role on the team was really questionable. Bulky water is nice, but obviously, Suicune wasn't part of the core 5 on the stall, so Vap wasn't really core 5 status either. This led me to more open minded thinking in the next revision, but for now, I was pretty satisfied.
 

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