Team Good Game (plz rate)
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my first RMT. This team has probably been my most successful team by far and the team I spent the most time on. However, after a while I found my team ended up having some random flaws which I don't have the knowledge or experience to correct. Then it hit me why don't I go and ask the rest of Smogon what I did wrong. Now before you get bored and say this guy is sucks, I give you the team:
(Changes in Bold)
The lead
Metagross@lum berry
Clear Body
252hp/252att/6spe
Adamant
Stealth rock
Meteor mash
Bullet punch
Explosion
Well after trying out many leads there was one lead that I kept returning to, if the answer isn't already obvious that Pokemon is metagross. This lead is one of the best IMO. It's bulk makes it incredibly useful, it allows for an easy set-up of stealth rock combine that with meteor mash and bullet bunch suicide leads are getting 2HKOe'd most of the time. Now add in explosion and you've got one nasty Pokemon. Instead of trying to explain how it works I'm just gonna give you a comparison with the top 10 leads of last month.
Top 10 leads January 2010:
Azelf: Azelf before you die to my meteor mash+bullet punch combo I'm gonna give you a choice, you can either set up SR or taunt me or be unusual and hit me with a fire blast. This is the position most azelf leads are put into when facing metagross.
Metagross: Hmmm this is tricky as I am not running EQ My gross can't touch other metagross's very easily. Normally I'll set up SR than go to gyarados. This one here can be a pain if I predict incorrectly.
Swampert: Ahhh good old pert. Well obviously a certain member of this team isn't particularly fond of pert *cough*jolteon*cough*. Generally I'll just boom from the get go as no one use protect on the first turn. Afterward I'll bring in Jolt to test the water.
Jirachi: Most of the time I'll just SR than switch out after stealing jirachi's pretty scarf.
Aerodactyl: See Azelf.
Infernape: This is where metagross's run of awesomeness ends. Due to me not running EQ and occa berry. This thing will just out speed and OHKO with fire blast. Most of the time I am forced to switch to gyarados.
Roserade: Most roserade dash straight in their and say all metagross's run occa berry and hit me with sleep powder. Then they realize they wasted a turn while I put them down to 1% with meteor mash. This is quickly followed up by BP to finish them off.
Heatran: This is probably the bane of all metagross leads as it outspeeds and can OHKO or 2HKO any variant before it can KO back. Similar to infernape I'm forced to switch in my flying fish to try and threaten this thing out.
Tyranitar: Hey tyranitar do you like eating STAB meteor mash's, "Yummy." You know I don't think this tyranitar is sticking around for long. Only probelm is the unbelievable amount of sets this thing can run when leading.
Gliscor: This really depends what mood I'm in I might boom, I might switch to gyara etc.
The bulky fish
Gyarados@Lefotvers
Intimidate
156hp/110att/100def/144spe
adamant
Dragon dance
Waterfall
Stone edge
Ice fang
Ah good old bulkydos whats not to love about this thing. It's one of my main early game pokes due to it's resistances and bulk. This thing works so well with gross as it can come in on most leads that beat gross and set up with ease. I chose ice fang as I find one of the most common switch ins to gyarados is latias and after a DD ice fang can OHKO non bulky versions. Stone edge gives me a way to beat other gyaras which I run into occasionally with this gyarados. I decided not to run taunt as I find that I njeed the other moves more often than I need to stop someone from roaring me out.
The killer electric
Jolteon@Choice specs
Volt absorb6hp/252spe/252spa
Timid
Thunderbolt
shadow ball
Hidden power (ice)
Baton pass
Charge beam jolteon, I sued to run a specs jolt here but after more testing I found it didn't work out to well and so in went this thing. I've it unbelievably easy to sweep with this thing after the opponent pert/blissey/snorlax/tyranitar is gone. Thunderbolt and shadow ball give me excellent coverage, combine that with HP ice and those dragons and gliscor don't love me anymore(the dragons dont like me anyway but....). Then if I think something will be KO'd with charge beam I'll fire it off and hopefully nab a boost and attempt a sweep. Really after a couple charge beam boost only the aforementioned poke's can stop this thing and then only scarfers can check it. It also has decent synergy with gyara and mence with them taking the ground type attacks aimed at jolt and him taking the electric attacks aimed at gyara.
After a bit of thought and help from some users I have switched back to specsjolt and after the MYSTICgar change it is working brilliantly. However I'm not sure what to run in the third spot as I never use hidden power. I need help here.
The scary mixed dragon
Salamence@life orb
Intimidate
16att/252spe/240spa
Mild
Draco meteor
Fire blast
Earthquake
Outrage
Mixmence the best wall breaker in the game. There is only one pokemon that can repeatedly switch into mence and it just dropped into uu (looks at cresselia). A combination of draco meteor and outrage gives me KO's on just about every wall in the game. Fire blast and EQ give me the ability to kill the pokes that resist my dragon STAB *cough*scizor*cough*. I chose the new mixmence over the old one as I find although the new one lacks survivability and has worse wall breaking capabilities, it more than makes up for it in its ability to sweep late game with outrage and the ability to OHKO heatran. That said this mence is often put into the position of, how many guys can i hit hard before life orb and SR kill me. Most of the time that number is pretty high.
The scout/revenge killer
Scizor@choice band
Technician
248hp/252att/8spe
U-turn
Bullet punch
Superpower
Pursuit
Wait how'd this thing end up on my team. Oh yeah that's right it just did, that is how scizor works you may not want to use him you may get really annoyed at him but he'll end up on most teams regardless. The reason: the excellent utility this set provides, it can scout, it can revenge, it can sweep, it can trap, it can kill blissey.:naughty:
Anyway most of smogon will know how this set works so I'm not gonna bother explaining it*Reads RMT rules*. Well that's a pain, well here goes nothing. This scizor provides me with a salamence check, and allows me to scout with u-turn add in bullet punch and you've got one nasty little poke. BP gives me the ability to sweep late game, and gives me the ninja priority move scizor is infamous for. Is that enough....oh who cares.
The scarfed revenge killer
Gengar@Life orb
Levitate
6hp/252spe/252spa
Timid
Shadow ball
Focus blast
Protest
Hidden power (fire)
Scarfgar, I love this thing. It comes in late game and kills stuff. Whether it be revenge killing or blowing up or just plain sweeping this scarfgar has got it covered. Shadow ball gives me the mandatory STAB, focus blast gives you the coverage and thunderbolt gives you the in the middle move. Now give it BOOM and Gengar hurts. I dont really care too much about this thing dying to scizor as most of the time its done its job before scizor comes out to get it. Thunderbolt also gives me the ability to KO jolly gyarados' who get past jolt and the rest of my team pretty easily.
After a suggestion from snorlax I changed this to MYSTICgar and is working decently, sometimes they have a poke that makes me wish I had scarfgar but most of the time this works better. Anyway, what are your opinions on this?
Team building
Well I knew I wanted to make an offensive team, after a few attempts, I decided that the best way forward was backward and started again. I knew that offensive teams are based around wall breaking so in went the best wall breaker IMO: Mixmence
Then I decided I needed someone to take ice attacks aimed at salamence and I thought why not give the metal bug a try and in he went.
Now I decided I needed another sweeper who could take those fire attacks that scizor hates. Tyranitar, gyarados, heatran, flygon, latias, starmie were all good choices for this so I slowly crossed them off. Tyranitar gives me sandstorm, wait, Salamence doesnt appreciate sand too much as it's already dying fast from SR and LO recoil. Flygon, actually I've never been too fond of flygon and it seemed a little redundant typing wise. Then at this stage I said I need someone to help finish off those walls. Which meant starmie's gone, latias is gone, which leaves us with gyara vs heatran and after some thought I went down the gyara route.
Now I needed someone to sweep with gyara and take the electric attacks aimed at him. Again I had multiple choices: electivire, flygon, jolteon, Raikou, Latias, dugtrio and magnezone. Again I had to shorten this list. Flygon went out, raikou went out, dugtrio is fail IMO, same with Electivire, which left me with magnezone, jolteon and latias. Magnezone doesn't fit this team as scizor's BP (which is sent at mence) is set up bait for my gyara. So I had a choice latias vs jolteon again I thought hard and found latias still takes quite a beating from electric attacks and seeing as electric is often accompanied by ghost attacks, latias went out. So in came the charged cat.
Now I had a nice core of pokemon. At the moment I needed a lead a stealth rocker and a rock resist. I also wanted another electric resist as jolt doesn't have too much survivability. After a while I found swampert who fit the bill perfectly.
The sort of as an after thought I put in scarfgar who has fulfilled its duty time and time again.
However after a bit of testing I found that swampert wasn't quite living up to my expectations and I thought an extra dragon resist would be nice. After a lot of competition due to the electric resist vs the dragon resist I finally settled on metagross.
Then after a bit more testing I changed jolteon from the specs set to the charge beam set. Almost immediately i found an increase in jolt's versatility and so I stayed with the new set. Also I found that HP ice on gengar wasn't used much and seemed almost useless. So after I while I replaced it with explosion.
Conclusion
This team is an offensive team which fits my style of play. The point of the team is to have every poke ready to sweep after its counter has gone down. Its not a team that is designed to let loose sdluke or empoleon or some other late game sweeper its just designed to sweep with whoever is more ready for the job. Well I hope you enjoy this RMT.
Thanks, NightmareZ
Introduction
Hello and welcome to my first RMT. This team has probably been my most successful team by far and the team I spent the most time on. However, after a while I found my team ended up having some random flaws which I don't have the knowledge or experience to correct. Then it hit me why don't I go and ask the rest of Smogon what I did wrong. Now before you get bored and say this guy is sucks, I give you the team:
(Changes in Bold)
The lead
Metagross@lum berry
Clear Body
252hp/252att/6spe
Adamant
Stealth rock
Meteor mash
Bullet punch
Explosion
Well after trying out many leads there was one lead that I kept returning to, if the answer isn't already obvious that Pokemon is metagross. This lead is one of the best IMO. It's bulk makes it incredibly useful, it allows for an easy set-up of stealth rock combine that with meteor mash and bullet bunch suicide leads are getting 2HKOe'd most of the time. Now add in explosion and you've got one nasty Pokemon. Instead of trying to explain how it works I'm just gonna give you a comparison with the top 10 leads of last month.
Top 10 leads January 2010:
Azelf: Azelf before you die to my meteor mash+bullet punch combo I'm gonna give you a choice, you can either set up SR or taunt me or be unusual and hit me with a fire blast. This is the position most azelf leads are put into when facing metagross.
Metagross: Hmmm this is tricky as I am not running EQ My gross can't touch other metagross's very easily. Normally I'll set up SR than go to gyarados. This one here can be a pain if I predict incorrectly.
Swampert: Ahhh good old pert. Well obviously a certain member of this team isn't particularly fond of pert *cough*jolteon*cough*. Generally I'll just boom from the get go as no one use protect on the first turn. Afterward I'll bring in Jolt to test the water.
Jirachi: Most of the time I'll just SR than switch out after stealing jirachi's pretty scarf.
Aerodactyl: See Azelf.
Infernape: This is where metagross's run of awesomeness ends. Due to me not running EQ and occa berry. This thing will just out speed and OHKO with fire blast. Most of the time I am forced to switch to gyarados.
Roserade: Most roserade dash straight in their and say all metagross's run occa berry and hit me with sleep powder. Then they realize they wasted a turn while I put them down to 1% with meteor mash. This is quickly followed up by BP to finish them off.
Heatran: This is probably the bane of all metagross leads as it outspeeds and can OHKO or 2HKO any variant before it can KO back. Similar to infernape I'm forced to switch in my flying fish to try and threaten this thing out.
Tyranitar: Hey tyranitar do you like eating STAB meteor mash's, "Yummy." You know I don't think this tyranitar is sticking around for long. Only probelm is the unbelievable amount of sets this thing can run when leading.
Gliscor: This really depends what mood I'm in I might boom, I might switch to gyara etc.
The bulky fish
Gyarados@Lefotvers
Intimidate
156hp/110att/100def/144spe
adamant
Dragon dance
Waterfall
Stone edge
Ice fang
Ah good old bulkydos whats not to love about this thing. It's one of my main early game pokes due to it's resistances and bulk. This thing works so well with gross as it can come in on most leads that beat gross and set up with ease. I chose ice fang as I find one of the most common switch ins to gyarados is latias and after a DD ice fang can OHKO non bulky versions. Stone edge gives me a way to beat other gyaras which I run into occasionally with this gyarados. I decided not to run taunt as I find that I njeed the other moves more often than I need to stop someone from roaring me out.
The killer electric
Jolteon@Choice specs
Volt absorb6hp/252spe/252spa
Timid
Thunderbolt
shadow ball
Hidden power (ice)
Baton pass
Charge beam jolteon, I sued to run a specs jolt here but after more testing I found it didn't work out to well and so in went this thing. I've it unbelievably easy to sweep with this thing after the opponent pert/blissey/snorlax/tyranitar is gone. Thunderbolt and shadow ball give me excellent coverage, combine that with HP ice and those dragons and gliscor don't love me anymore(the dragons dont like me anyway but....). Then if I think something will be KO'd with charge beam I'll fire it off and hopefully nab a boost and attempt a sweep. Really after a couple charge beam boost only the aforementioned poke's can stop this thing and then only scarfers can check it. It also has decent synergy with gyara and mence with them taking the ground type attacks aimed at jolt and him taking the electric attacks aimed at gyara.
After a bit of thought and help from some users I have switched back to specsjolt and after the MYSTICgar change it is working brilliantly. However I'm not sure what to run in the third spot as I never use hidden power. I need help here.
The scary mixed dragon
Salamence@life orb
Intimidate
16att/252spe/240spa
Mild
Draco meteor
Fire blast
Earthquake
Outrage
Mixmence the best wall breaker in the game. There is only one pokemon that can repeatedly switch into mence and it just dropped into uu (looks at cresselia). A combination of draco meteor and outrage gives me KO's on just about every wall in the game. Fire blast and EQ give me the ability to kill the pokes that resist my dragon STAB *cough*scizor*cough*. I chose the new mixmence over the old one as I find although the new one lacks survivability and has worse wall breaking capabilities, it more than makes up for it in its ability to sweep late game with outrage and the ability to OHKO heatran. That said this mence is often put into the position of, how many guys can i hit hard before life orb and SR kill me. Most of the time that number is pretty high.
The scout/revenge killer
Scizor@choice band
Technician
248hp/252att/8spe
U-turn
Bullet punch
Superpower
Pursuit
Wait how'd this thing end up on my team. Oh yeah that's right it just did, that is how scizor works you may not want to use him you may get really annoyed at him but he'll end up on most teams regardless. The reason: the excellent utility this set provides, it can scout, it can revenge, it can sweep, it can trap, it can kill blissey.:naughty:
Anyway most of smogon will know how this set works so I'm not gonna bother explaining it*Reads RMT rules*. Well that's a pain, well here goes nothing. This scizor provides me with a salamence check, and allows me to scout with u-turn add in bullet punch and you've got one nasty little poke. BP gives me the ability to sweep late game, and gives me the ninja priority move scizor is infamous for. Is that enough....oh who cares.
The scarfed revenge killer
Gengar@Life orb
Levitate
6hp/252spe/252spa
Timid
Shadow ball
Focus blast
Protest
Hidden power (fire)
Scarfgar, I love this thing. It comes in late game and kills stuff. Whether it be revenge killing or blowing up or just plain sweeping this scarfgar has got it covered. Shadow ball gives me the mandatory STAB, focus blast gives you the coverage and thunderbolt gives you the in the middle move. Now give it BOOM and Gengar hurts. I dont really care too much about this thing dying to scizor as most of the time its done its job before scizor comes out to get it. Thunderbolt also gives me the ability to KO jolly gyarados' who get past jolt and the rest of my team pretty easily.
After a suggestion from snorlax I changed this to MYSTICgar and is working decently, sometimes they have a poke that makes me wish I had scarfgar but most of the time this works better. Anyway, what are your opinions on this?
Team building
Well I knew I wanted to make an offensive team, after a few attempts, I decided that the best way forward was backward and started again. I knew that offensive teams are based around wall breaking so in went the best wall breaker IMO: Mixmence
Then I decided I needed someone to take ice attacks aimed at salamence and I thought why not give the metal bug a try and in he went.
Now I decided I needed another sweeper who could take those fire attacks that scizor hates. Tyranitar, gyarados, heatran, flygon, latias, starmie were all good choices for this so I slowly crossed them off. Tyranitar gives me sandstorm, wait, Salamence doesnt appreciate sand too much as it's already dying fast from SR and LO recoil. Flygon, actually I've never been too fond of flygon and it seemed a little redundant typing wise. Then at this stage I said I need someone to help finish off those walls. Which meant starmie's gone, latias is gone, which leaves us with gyara vs heatran and after some thought I went down the gyara route.
Now I needed someone to sweep with gyara and take the electric attacks aimed at him. Again I had multiple choices: electivire, flygon, jolteon, Raikou, Latias, dugtrio and magnezone. Again I had to shorten this list. Flygon went out, raikou went out, dugtrio is fail IMO, same with Electivire, which left me with magnezone, jolteon and latias. Magnezone doesn't fit this team as scizor's BP (which is sent at mence) is set up bait for my gyara. So I had a choice latias vs jolteon again I thought hard and found latias still takes quite a beating from electric attacks and seeing as electric is often accompanied by ghost attacks, latias went out. So in came the charged cat.
Now I had a nice core of pokemon. At the moment I needed a lead a stealth rocker and a rock resist. I also wanted another electric resist as jolt doesn't have too much survivability. After a while I found swampert who fit the bill perfectly.
The sort of as an after thought I put in scarfgar who has fulfilled its duty time and time again.
However after a bit of testing I found that swampert wasn't quite living up to my expectations and I thought an extra dragon resist would be nice. After a lot of competition due to the electric resist vs the dragon resist I finally settled on metagross.
Then after a bit more testing I changed jolteon from the specs set to the charge beam set. Almost immediately i found an increase in jolt's versatility and so I stayed with the new set. Also I found that HP ice on gengar wasn't used much and seemed almost useless. So after I while I replaced it with explosion.
Conclusion
This team is an offensive team which fits my style of play. The point of the team is to have every poke ready to sweep after its counter has gone down. Its not a team that is designed to let loose sdluke or empoleon or some other late game sweeper its just designed to sweep with whoever is more ready for the job. Well I hope you enjoy this RMT.
Thanks, NightmareZ
