So to sum up suicune in 5th gen, he was simply too slow, weak, predictable, with a total lack of recovery, lacking in the raw bulk required and outclassed by other special sweepers in ou 5th gen to be the top tier threat it once was.
6th gen has come and while suicune is still a shadow of it's former self as it was in 3rd gen, but thing's for the legendary water beast of the north wind are looking up. The sleep mechanics of 6th gen are the same as they were before 5th gen, meaning rest talk is now a viable strategy, adding to this, suicune received scald from 5th gen previously and now stands to abuse his infamous crocune set to greater ruthless efficiency. Sacrificing a small amount of power to trade for a 30% chance of burning is a big boon for suicune who can make full use of his bulk on the special side from calm mind, while threatening physical attackers with his stab and a potential to burn (to which many pokemon who are otherwise unaffected by the burn are hit for super effective damage). Pokemon previously challenging suicunes supremacy as top dog of special sweepers/tanks now find themselves less effective than previously. To top it all off, the power creep in this generation has been less brutal than before and many mega's that would otherwise threaten suicune have been banned or can be dealt with with relative ease with good teammate sections. Overall, while suicune has fallen short of the "top tier threat" department, 6th gen has overall been kind to the once king of the special sweepers. Suicune is back and remains the serious threat he was in 3rd gen, so long as he gets the support he requires.
So starting off the team is suicune and as you will see later, I shall be going for the tradition crocune set with scald. In todays metagame it makes for a great mid/late game sweeper, once threats such as rotom-w, mega-venasaur and thundrous-i/t are dealt with.
Since the usage statistics fail to point out the real dangers in todays metagame I will be focusing on the viability rankings as the primary measure of threats to suicune, in the hands of experienced players.
From S to B+ suicune is not a big fan of
Charizard-x -the inability to burn or hit the physical mega evo of charizard can present issues and it's better not to test my luck of calm minding while it dd's as charizard is significantly stronger than suicune and will rapidly gain the upper hand in a boosting war. The long and short of it is, this is not a pokemon suicune should be dealing with himself.
Pinser-mega - his ability to hit absurdly high after an sd, I put him in the same boat as charizard x, while suicune could burn him, in a boosting war suicune will loose and it's again best, this monster is dealt with by another pokemon.
thunderous- need I say more? What this mon lacks in bulk, it has in raw power, super effective raw power to be specific, power that it can use to kill suicune before it sets up. Definitely something essential to build the team around to dealing with.
kyurem-black - behind a sub, kyurem-b destorys suicine with powerful fusion bolts and fears no burn from suicune, a pokemon to be taken down before suicune can set up a sub and cause general havoc to the team.
manaphy - can quickly outdraw suicune in the race to boost and hit back with energy ball.
rotom-w - Suicune can't do much to the washing machine without a few boosts behind his belt, while rotom can hit hard with se stab electric moves and troll resting suicune with pain split, not to mention the potential to be rendered useless by a well timed tricked choice item.
venasaur-mega, huge threat to suicune, a powerful bulky grass type that walls suicune sole stab, definitely to be dealt with apropriately by another team mate.
gyarados- normal/mega - resists suicine stab and can set up and kill suicune behind a sub, otherwise faces the risk of a burn and being worn down by suicune, but is bets dealt by other members of the team.
Lati twins- Both wall suicuines stab and can potentially set up in suicunes face, although latias is the more threatening of the 2 as it i more likely to run a calm mind set than her brother and defeat suicune in a calm mind war. Definately something to be removed to allow suicune to effectively sweep.
clefable - Unaware of the danger suicune poses, clefable boldly ignores any stat boosts and can cause suicune a real headache as it find it's self unable to deal much damage to the bulky clefable.
chansey/blissey - in the end suicune could win a stall wra with these too, but it's sbetter to let something else kill them for suicune, similar to the lati twins in that respect.
zapdos - stab electric moves will hurt suicune and zapdos will be a pain to deal with for suicune, best to remove zapdos, so setting up suicune is easier.
so naturally team mates for suicune have to weaken or kill these pokemon to allow for suicune to set and and sweep the enemy team with the same ease, it did back in 3rd gen
so naturally team mates for suicune have to weaken or kill these pokemon to allow for suicune to set and and sweep the enemy team with the same ease, it did back in 3rd gen
The team is going to need a choice user of some kinda and terrakion came to mind, able to wreck, revenge or pick off otherwise weakened threat to suicune. Terrakion. stood out to me as an ideal choice posing due to posing a serious health hazard to 8 of the threat to suicune mentioned, hard with it's stab alone super effectively and that has earned it a place on the team.
I require a way of dealing with threats such as mega-venasaur and rotom-w since neither suicune or terrakion can handle them, the answer, latias. Latias can handle these 2 with ease, largely thanks to her, excellent bulk, speed and good special attack, not to mention she resists 3/4 of their stab moves. Another bonus about latias is she can handle other threats such as garchomp, manphy, kyurem-b reasonably well as a check or counter. Whether it be on the revenge and picking off weakened threat or flat out koing them. Latias gets the slot on the team, as her bulk I find more useful than the raw power of her brother latios.
Tyranitar!!! Err this is going to need some explaining, well the thing is I was thinking about using scizor, but i became clear scizor was not going to cut it as much as tyranitar could. Despite sharing the many weaknesses of rock with terrakion, tyranitar posed more advanatges than scizor, able to single handledy defeat threats such as the lati and kyurem-b, set up sr and still make it home for tea. Tyranitar eventually took the spot from the metal bug and stands as the teams lead and top notch counter for many of the threats suicune cannot deal with.
Fairies and bulky water types are a real pain for the team, so when the mega slot is empty, who better to fill it than the not so little mega that can kill both? Mega-vensaur was going to be added to the team at an earlier stage, but I was wanting to make sure no other mega could fill th job better and it turns out, thats not the case and the giant venasaur makes it' way to the team.
To finish off the team, I was hoping for a fairy type, unfortunately I also was hoping to add a steel to the team as well, maybe a fire type too and atm, scizor is looking to be a potential pain for latias and tyranitar and terrakion too. Fairy types are weak to steel, which makes the 2 best faries of choice , togekiss and clefable, less preferable. Althrough he shares the same weaknesses as tyrnitar and terrakion, heatran made his way onto the team.
The sheer number of weaknesses that having terrakion, tyranitar and heatran on the same team, presented too many unacceptable weaknesses and terrakion was dropped in favor of scizor with heatran taking up the gauntlet of scarf user. Scizor tyraniatar and heatran roughly cover the job previously held by terrkion for the most part, dealing with the same threats in a similar manor, with out the added agrovation of 2 earthquake weak pokemon, with a levtator that dislikes physical hits as much as the pokemon that dish them out.
Okay, after careful consideration, terrakion was reintroduced, over tyranitar. Most of the roles tyranitar could do, were done by scizor, heatran and terrakion in one, but with the added bonus of having the benefits, terrakion offers (awesome offensive typing, speed good defences), without having the large negatives acossiated with tyranitar, namely more unwanted weakness for minimal gain.
Halcyon kindly rated the team and made a few suggestions to help it out. Latios replaced latias in this respect on halcyons recommendation to go for the more offensive of the lati twins, as it was felt the greater offensive presence was worth more and mega-venasaur could deal with threats latias could, such as keldeo, just as effectively. At this time I switched hetarans set to a special defensive variant on another recomendation of halcyons.
So with out further adue the team
Jolly
252 Atk / 4 Hp / 252 Spd
-Stone edge
-Close Combat
-Earthquake
-X-Scissor
Terrakion, as mentioned earlier, he's been on and off the team and has been reinstated to replace tyranitars, due to the latter role being fulfilled by terrakion and other pokemon on the team, namely killing the lati and bringing powerful rock stab onto the table, but offering both the speed, power and reduced weaknesses, from the transition between the two mons. Terrakion offers the incredible coverage that only rock/fight can offer, add to the fact terrakion has 129 and stab on both moves and he makes for a naturally powerful threat, as a scarfers, he is reasonably powerful and very fast at the same time and for the team, he can pick off weakened threats such as kyurem-b or revenge kill charizard x, who would present this team with a real issue if he was allowed to set up, to which stone edge is just 100% ko with out rocks set up badly. Which makes terrakions speed, power and stone edge very important for the team, to kill a dd'ed charizard-x.
Adamant
248 Hp 252 Atk 8 Spdef
-Bullet Punch
-U-turn
-Super Power
-Pursuit
Scizor replaced terrakion in terms of a team slot, although it originally it was competing with tyranitar for a slot. Scizor now finds it way onto the team due to superior typing and lack of weaknesses that made terrakion a liability. Scizor works with tyranitar and heatran to ward off threats to the team that terrakion did originally. hitting fairies like clefable for super effective damage on their weaker defense for super effective damage. Scizor now for fills the roles of tyranitar as well, now terrakion has returned to the team, namely killing the lati twins.
Timid
252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
-Thunderbolt
-Defog
-Draco meteor
-Psyshock
Replacing Latias on halcyons advice, latios is here to lay down some offensive pressure. Like latias before it latios deals with threats such a mega-vena and revenging garchomp ect., just as effectively as latias, but trading defense for offense. Defog is being used over roost to deal with harzards form the likes of deoyxs-d and latios is mainly here to hit hard and open holes with a little support in defog, so the staying power of roost isn't as valuable on latios as it was on his sister.
relaxed
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
-giga drain
-sludge bomb
-sleep powder
-synthesis
Mega Vensaur is very much the dark horse of the mega evolutions, no one really expected it to amount to anything as far as i know, but it turns out this is a pokemon with the right stats, movepool and ability to pull off the role of tank, better than any other mega and argubly betetr than most pokemon in general. Mega Vensaur is on the team to deal with bulky waters that could otherwise cause the team trouble as well as the every irritating fairy types as a bonus. The physical set has been chosen as the team has got latias to deal with taking special hits. The set is simple, giga drain for attacking and healing, synthesis for the healing part, sleep powder to cripple threats for said threat to become another teammates problem and sludge bomb for stab coverage to hit fairies as well.
Calm
248 Hp / 8 Def / 252 SpD
-Lava plume
-Protect
-Taunt
-Toxic
Introducing terrakion into the team meant choice scarf heatran, was largely unnecessary and the more preferred set to the team and myself is an offensive variant. On the advice of halcyon, I changed my offensive heatran set into a specially defensive, taunt biased set, being able to handle threats such a ferrotorn and megavasaur better, in addition to shuttign down walls such as chansey as mentioned by halcyon.
bold
252 Hp / 252 Def / 6 SpDef
-scald
-rest
-sleep talk
-calm mind
Suicune, the star of the show, I have rambled on about suicune earlier, so I'll cut the chatter and get straight into the nitty gritty. This is crocune, once threats such as thunderous and mega pinser have gone, I set up calm mind, I set it up some more and then rest off the damage, sleep talk off the nap and rinse and repeat until i sweep the enemy team ( with the exception of using the odd scald when i feel mean and wish to cripple the enemy physical attacker). Investing in defense seemed more practical than special defense, as I can boost my special, but not my physical, so naturally if i want to be taking hits while i set up I may as well maximize defense, as outside burn from scald it's not going to be getting any higher, any time soon.
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