Practice team 15

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Welcome to the newest round of practice teams. If you're an aspiring rater, then these will hopefully allow you to pick up on and address any problems with your rating, as well as providing you with experience rating teams that have been specifically made to be as tough to rate as possible, and to make you think creatively in order to find the best changes. Any rates we receive will be replied to with personalized feedback by one of tab, Jirachi, Remedy, and Trinitrotoluene. Then, at the end of the round, we'll give some general hints and feedback on how things went, and post the best rate that we received as an example of how to rate the team.

Anyone is welcome to participate and send in their rate, and everyone will be guaranteed to receive feedback appropriate to the effort they put into their rate, regardless of their ability. However, to keep things fair we won't be considering rates sent in by official team raters as winners of the best rate.

If you would like to participate in this round, PM your rate to tab no later than Friday July 26th.

With that out of the way, here's the team! The basic goal of this team is to be a bulky offense team that makes use of Toxic Spikes and matches up reasonably well against most of the metagame.

Roserade @ Leftovers​

Trait: Natural Cure​

EVs: 248 HP / 104 Spd / 156 SDef​

Calm Nature​

- Giga Drain​

- Hidden Power [Fire]​

- Toxic Spikes​

- Sleep Powder​

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Roserade is the Toxic Spiker of choice here, and that's really its main role on the team. Other than that, it's here as a secondary rain check and general special sponge. Sleep is always a nice thing to have. EVs outspeed Adamant Breloom and then max out special defense.​

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Celebi @ Leftovers​

Trait: Natural Cure​

EVs: 248 HP / 16 Spd / 244 SDef​

Calm Nature​

- Giga Drain​

- Nasty Plot​

- Baton Pass​

- Recover​

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The teams main answer to rain and Keldeo in particular. Again, EVs are to outspeed Adamant Breloom and then maximise bulk. I've gone with a NP pass set as Gengar and Heatran are both pretty solid receivers, and giving Jirachi a head start on its CMing can be pretty useful too.​

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Garchomp @ Lum Berry​

Trait: Rough Skin​

EVs: 252 Spd / 252 Atk / 4 Def​

Jolly Nature​

- Earthquake​

- Outrage​

- Swords Dance​

- Stealth Rock​

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Garchomp's here to function as the teams Stealth Rock user, a check to pokemon like Scizor and Jirachi, and a lategame sweeper. I've gone with a Lum Berry to help it sweep, and so that it can deal with Sash Breloom leads.​

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Gengar @ Black Sludge​

Trait: Levitate​

EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 Def​

Timid Nature​

- Shadow Ball​

- Focus Blast​

- Disable​

- Substitute​

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SubDisable Gengar is great at abusing Toxic Spikes, and acts as the teams check against pokemon like Terrakion. It's also pretty important that Gengar is the only particularly fast pokemon on the team, so it's needed for finishing off weakened sweepers.​

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Jirachi @ Leftovers​

Trait: Serene Grace​

EVs: 248 HP / 96 Spd / 164 Def​

Bold Nature​

- Thunderbolt​

- Hidden Power [Ice]​

- Calm Mind​

- Wish​

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WishCM Jirachi is another pokemon that's good at abusing Toxic Spikes, and it's also useful for sponging various hits and giving the team a better chance at sticking around long enough to get ready for a sweep with Wish. The EVs let it outspeed Adamant Dragonite, and hopefully most Landorus-T as well, letting it hit them with HP Ice.​

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Heatran @ Air Balloon​

Trait: Flash Fire​

EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd / 4 Def​

Timid Nature​

- Lava Plume​

- Earth Power​

- Hidden Power [Ice]​

- Toxic​

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Heatran's mostly on the team as a way of checking sun teams, Dragonite and Salamence. Lava Plume over Fire Blast seeing as the team is weatherless, so fire isn't the most reliable stab, and Toxic is there to hit Latias and Latios, as well as water types when Toxic Spikes aren't down.

 

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Most of you should have received a reply to your rate by now - if you haven't done by Tuesday, send me a PM and I'll make sure you get one. I've read over all of the rates that were sent in, and chosen McBarrett's as the best, so congrats to him! Here's his rate:

Hey, nice team you have here! I like the idea of abusing Toxic Spikes and Roserade is definitely an underrated Pokemon in the current metagame.

Anyways, this team is pretty solid but there are a few glaring threats that I could definitely see you having trouble with. The ones that really stood out to me were Mamoswine and Terrakion. Mamoswine hits your entire team outside of Gengar for Super Effective Damage while Terrakion's dual STABs are unresisted by your team. Having to rely on Gengar to switch into these threats is really not going to be effective for long.

Since these two threats are so Offensive in nature and cover such a large portion of the metagame with their dual STAB's I would recommend having something that could threaten them Offensively, rather than trying to wall the both of them on it's own which is nearly impossible. For that reason I would recommend utilizing CB Scizor over Celebi. I'll explain why I think Celebi should go shortly, but Scizor will provide you with some very useful priority and the ability to OHKO both Terrakion and Mamoswine before they can do anything. Also, U-Turn will allow you to switch out into favorable matchups and setup opportunities which can be very beneficial to your team.

Now, the reason I would recommend getting rid of Celebi is because I find it to be somewhat redundant with Roserade. They are both special walls with very similar resistances. Plus, you say Celebi is your main answer to things like Keldeo but Roserade can handle Keldeo pretty well on its own, especially if you were to make the following changes to its Move Set/ EV spread. First, I think you will find Sleep Powder to be less effective in combination with Toxic Spikes as your opponent could switch into something that would be effected by Toxic Spikes to be able to absorb the Sleep Powder. Plus the accuracy is not reliable enough imo. Therefore, I would suggest changing Sleep Powder to Rest. This gives Roserade added survivability to wall Rain Threats for a longer period of time plus it allows it to Toxic Stall much better, fitting in perfectly to your team strategy. Next on your EV Spread, I don't think it is overly important to be trying to outrun Adamant Breloom. I have found Jolly to be much more common anyways plus you resist both of its STABs and have Natural Cure to take on Spore rather easily. The following EV Spread of 252 HP/ 120 Def/ 136 Sp Def will give you some much desired bulk on the physical side allowing you to take things like Secret Sword from Keldeo much better. You can even survive a Bullet Punch from CB Scizor with that spread.

Even with these changes though, your team still does not take Physical Fighting and Ground Type attacks very well which was something I was worried about initially. Therefore I would suggest one final change in switching your current Jirachi to a Physically Defensive CM Latias. This set achieves many of the same things that your current Jirachi set did, however it gives you much better Defensive synergy with a Ground Immunity, Fighting Resist, and Water Resist.
You can use this set:

Latias @ Leftovers
Bold Nature 252 HP/ 228 Def/ 28 Speed
Calm Mind
Dragon Pulse
Recover
Substitute/Reflect

Laslty, just as a personal preference, I would change Swords Dance to Fire Blast on Garchomp. This allows Garchomp to handle Custap Skarmory much better who can be rather annoying if you do not have a spinner as your team does lack.

Hopefully my suggestions helped! Good luck with the team!

This is a pretty good example of how to go about rating the team, and has most of the right ideas - Celebi + Roserade is redundant, the team's weak to Keldeo/Mamoswine/Terrakion, etc. A lot of you had fairly similar ideas, and (variations on) the Latias suggestion were pretty common. I don't have a vast amount to say in the way of general comments, but one big thing that you'll already have been told about if I replied to your rate, and that most of you will be hearing about from the others, is that you need to be careful about how long your rate is. Most of these were too long, with most of that length coming from unnecessary fluff. Another thing to be wary of is losing track of what you're rating - there were a few examples of people completely forgetting that the team is supposed to make use of Toxic Spikes and either filling it with offensive pokemon that don't really need TS support, or getting rid of TS altogether. If a team has a specific main goal, you need to make sure you stick to that - that's the point of rating!

As always, feel free to PM me with any questions. Remedy will be posting the next practice team in a week or two, so hopefully you'll have found this one useful enough to give his team a rate too. If you rate a few of these teams, I'll try and make it work so you get a reply from a different rater each time so that you get as wide a range of feedback as possible.