Practice team 16

[Reymedy]

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, Harsha, 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 August 16th.

Today, the team is submitted by a poor user, feel free to help him :


Hello, I'm Nestor Clueless, I hereby present to you my masterpiece.
This team is built around a Hydreigon&Breloom sweep. They indeed complement themselves perfectly, as Breloom usually set-up on anything able to take Hydreigon hits.
As this core lacks speed and strengh to take Dragon hits, I added a Mamoswine in order to keep in check most dragons, and an Alakazam to outspeed the OU tier. I made sure my team had a nice defensive synergy with a wombo FWG core ! I can withstand weather teams assault thanks to stuff like Rotom-W and Shed Shell Heatran.
Here is the jewel :

Rotom-Wash @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 SAtk / 216 Spd / 40 HP
Modest Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Trick​

Rotom is my lead of choice. He can dismantle Rain teams on its own. I decided to give him a Scarf because he attracts Latias, Ferrothorn, Blissey, Celebi and other special walls really well.
The HP Fire is here to hit Ferrothorn hard when I lead with him against a Rain team, they always switch their Ferrothorn in. The EVs so he can be faster than Dragonite at +1 and stop its sweep.

Mamoswine @ Chople Berry
Trait: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 HP
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Ice Shard
- Superpower
- Icicle Spear​

Mamoswine helps me to revenge kill dragons that Rotom can't hit too hard. He can also lure Terrakion with his Chople Berry and kill it, which is really useful. The Berry helps me for so many things, it's not even funny : Breloom, Keldeo, Conkeldurr, Lucario... they all get surprise killed thanks to this set. Thanks to him, I can always win against DragnMag teams !

Alakazam @ Life Orb
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd / 4 HP
Timid Nature
- Focus Blast
- Psyshock
- Shadow Ball
- Substitute​

Because my team was slow, I needed a fast hitter. Alakazam is the fastest threat in the tier after Jolteon. But he hits way stronger and is harder to worn down thanks to Magic Guard. Because he forces a lot of switches, Substitute is an incredibly useful move. It helps against Trappers, it eases the prediction and allows me to beat Sucker Punch users such as Toxicroak. He shines against both stall and offensive teams.

Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 8 Spd / 244 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Impish Nature
- Spore
- Leech Seed
- Substitute
- Drain Punch​

Here is my physical wall and my status absorber. His typing is ideal for this role because he's one of the few pokemons able to resist the Rock/Ground coverage combo (along with Claydol). On top of that, the Grass typing grants him many useful resistances, he can set-up really easily on Rotom-W once his Toxic Orb is activated (which is easy thanks to Rotom's Volt-Switch), or on Jirachi, Gliscor and many others.

Heatran @ Shed Shell
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SDef / 8 Def
Calm Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Lava Plume
- Roar
- Toxic​

My special wall, that can switch in on Celebi more than once !
I needed an answer to Sun teams, and Shed Shell Heatran is a full stop to most of them because they rely on Dugtrio to trap him. He is also my SRer of choice, and can spread status. I needed a strong check to Scizor because Breloom can't wall all its versions.

Hydreigon @ Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SAtk / 4 Spd
Modest Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Focus Blast
- Roost
- Substitute​

Because Celebi walls Breloom, I needed pokemons able to beat it up. Hydreigon is an underated pokemon and I don't understand why. This set is cool because the Dark/Fighting coverage is unresisted amongst the pokemons. He gives a lot of troubles to more defensive teams because he's immune to Spikes and can Substitute on their weak attacks. Once I crippled Blissey with Rotom-W, Hydreigon can usually do the rest.

 

[Reymedy]

Nestor Clueless appreciated a lot all the help you brought !
If some of you did not receive a feedback yet, let me know.

Hey Nestor, pretty nice team you have here. Hydreigon is definitely an underrated sweeper and can be very dangerous if given the proper support. I think focusing more on wallbreaking than getting behind a sub could leave you with some opportunities to clean up later in the game though. You also have a serious weakness to CB Terrakion and Rain seems to give you trouble as well since Rotom-W can only take so many hits. Anyways, with that said lets go into the rate.

I think changing your Breloom set to a more offensive one will help you break through special walls that can give Hydreigon trouble much easier. Plus a powerful Mach Punch will allow you to revenge kill Terrakion which is a large problem otherwise. I would recommend a Fighting Gem set with Focus Punch to deal huge damage to a large portion of the meta, you can even break through things like Latios on the switch in.
Here's the set:
Breloom @ Fighting Gem
Adamant Nature
252 att/ 4 hp/ 252 speed
Spore
Focus Punch
Mach Punch
Bullet Seed.

Next is just a small suggestion but you should switch Mamoswine's item from Chople Berry to Life Orb. Chople Berry is very situational and sometimes won't even work. For example CB Terrakion still OHKOs through Chople Berry after SR and you can't take out Keldeo with an EQ anyways so you will still be 2HKO'd. The extra power will let you break through walls much easier.

Lastly, since you are still pretty weak to Rain Spam and fighting types I would recommend changing Alakazam to a Sub CM Latias. Latias is still a potent offensive threat and has a great speed tier but it is much bulkier than Alakazam and can take some hits when needed. Plus it can set up rather easily to punch holes in the opposing team, making a powerful tandem with Hydreigon.
You can use this set:
Latias @ Leftovers
Timid Nature
252 speed/ 248 hp/ 8 sp att
Substitute
Calm Mind
Dragon Pulse
HP Fire/ Psyshock/ Roost

Hope my suggestions helped, good luck with the team!

This is the rate Nestor prefers the most... So once against McBarrett's rate has been chosen as the best rate.
He's the rater who tried to change the team the most, and although he didn't make the team more original, he still improved it deeply.
By the way, this would be the main issue about everybody else's rates : you identify issues (fighting strong hitters), but don't fix it in the end. So raters, time to grow a pair and do the changes you have to do !
However, it's good to see that past round's lesson about the rates' length has been retained. Hopefully, everybody gets better in the process.

Feel free to PM tab for additionnal informations and comments, next round will be posted in a week or two (don't let McBarrett win this time ;_;).

(Here are the imporant, and less important weaknesses you had to notice :
- Keldeo (Scarf)
- CB Terrakion because Breloom can take a single hit, and Mamoswine with Chople needs more investment to live it (let's see if they change the set, or the spread to fix it). Alak can be a short time answer though.
- The team lacks switch in to physical dragons, but it can revenge kill it with Mamoswine. Stuff like LO Latios is really hard to handle, especially if it has Surf to kill Heatran.
- Scizor, especially if speedy enough for Heatran, and with Superpower. An all-out version with SD/BugBite/BPunch/SPower should rape the team.
- Hmmm, Gastrodon is probably a bitch if physically defensive (honneslty this set is cool).
- Lucario, if he SD on a switch it's over, if he attacks on a switch.. it's probably over for one of the pokemons.
- Reuniclus offensive Trick Room oO
- Mamoswine)