Looking for a little feedback on this VGC team. All the EV spreads are (or tried to be) base 8 to account for the meta being level 50. I've been using this on Showdown to decent success, and crawled up to around a 1700 rating on Battle Spot (recently dropping to 1650) with it.
On Battle Spot the team is pretty streaky, when it works it works great and I can string together wins effectively. But I've also built up a couple of losing streaks that I think I can optimize out.
The main strategy here is to use Meowstic to create a bulky team that is hard to screw with strategy wise (status or damage), and either run Zard-Venusaur to sweep with Heat Wave and Growth'd Giga Drains or run with Slowking-Mawile and roll Trick Room. Greninja is the man in the middle right, playing a flex spot for both teams.
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Meowstic [Male] @ Light Clay
Prankster (Hidden Ability)
248 HP / 92 Def / 168 SpDef
Impish
-Quick Guard
-Safeguard
-Reflect
-Light Screen
Meowstic helps keep the team alive. Screens are obvious, as is Safeguard. I've really fallen in love with Quick Guard, being able to shut down turn 1 Fake Outs or Talonflame revenge kills is fantastic. Quick Guard also shuts down status moves from other Prankster users which allows me to abuse the +3 priority and invest EVs into bulk and not worry about speed wars.
However, there is some slight overlap in the use of Quick Guard and Safeguard that makes me feel like might be worth replacing Safeguard with Thunder Wave or even Psychic. Thunder Wave helps Zard sweep, but Psychic helps avoid instant losses when Meowstic is the last mon standing. Both Safeguard and Quick Guard have won me games so its really hard to make a change.
With this spread its rather hard to OHKO Meowstic, which at least ensures I'm getting Reflect and Light Screen up unless doubled up on. The only thing I think causes this set problems is faster Prankster users with Taunt, which I think limits it to Murkrows.
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Solar Power
12 HP / 248 Sp Att / 248 Speed
Modest
-Heat Wave
-Dragon Pulse
-Solar Beam
-Protect
Heat Wave all the things. Zard Y Heat Waves under the sun are scary, and sun helps Venusaur sweep and play support with faster Sleep Powders. Solar Beam and Dragon Pulse are for coverage. Modest DPs do a good chunk of damage to bulky dragons, and with screens up Zard Y is hard to kill outside of Rock Slide and Stone Edges. Protect has been situationally useful, and can sometimes be counter productive if I have all my screens and guards up. Air Slash might be better, but I usually find myself want to stack damage on both sides of the field with Heat Wave instead.
Rock Slide here is a pain, and this team doesn't have the most effective switch ins for beefy ones. Usually Protecting to get sun up and bouncing to Venusaur works (with a Reflect), but switching in doubles can be risky.
Venusaur @ Sitrus Berry
Chlorophyll (Hidden Ability)
172 HP / 248 Sp Att / 88 Speed
Timid
-Giga Drain
-Sludge Bomb
-Sleep Powder
-Growth
Half way between support and sweeper, but it can be effective. The HP has saved my ass a number of times allowing for a Growth or a Sleep Powder but the EVs might not be fully optimized. I've bounced around with the hold item a bit, starting with a Maranga Berry to try to get even bulkier on the special side but Sitrus is more flexible. Absorb Bulb is tempting, but with the reduced power of water in the sun I find few opportunities to get use out of it.
Giga and Sludge Bomb are fairly standard attacks, neither I would want to give up. SB for Fairies and GD for staying alive. Talonflame here is probably the biggest threat to Venusaur, but Meowstic with Quick Guard is handy for shutting that down. And I've yet to see any Scarf Talonflames yet.
Greninja @ Life Orb
Protean (Hidden Ability)
12 HP / 248 Sp Att / 248 Speed
Timid
-Ice Beam
-Grass Knot
-Extrasensory
-Mat Block
The weird mon for my team, him and Meow generally work on both the Sun and Trick teams. I run Mat Block here mostly due to legacy. I thought the move sounded amazing, but it ends up being a little under used in practice. I might just need to get better at using it, but I'm really tempted to replace it. I just don't know with what.
The rest of the set is about just hitting stuff hard and having decent coverage to open up the Sun/Trick team behind him. I left out water attacks due to being on Sun teams occasionally and Grass Knot seems to cover a few of the Pokemon I could use water attacks on (mainly Tyranitar).
This is the spot I feel like I can optimize with a better Pokemon the most. I've been experimenting with Conkeldurr and other fighting types, but nothing seems to really fit right.
Slowking @ Weakness Policy
Oblivious
248 HP / 12 Def / 248 Sp Att
Quiet
-Flamethrower
-Power Gem
-Psychic
-Trick Room
Instead of worrying about Trick Room (which I feel is a little less common this gen for some reason), I thought I'd build out half my team to use it. Slowking is pretty interesting, being bulky, slow, and generally hard hitting. At first I had Safety Goggles here to prevent Sleep, but Meowstic handles that for me and Weakness Policy really ratchets up his sweeping potential (thanks to being hard to kill with SE attacks).
Flamethrower and Psychic are simple choices I think. Fire Blast was replaced due to accuracy, and with a Weakness Policy boost the extra power is unnecessary. Power Gem is a bit of the funky side, mostly there to kill Charizard Y under sun where water attacks would fail to and it helps cover Talonflame.
Oblivious is to avoid Taunts preventing Trick Room from setting up.
Mawile @ Mawilite
Intimidate
248 HP / 248 Att / 12 Sp Def
Adamant
-Sucker Punch
-Play Rough
-Fire Fang
-Swords Dance
Mawile walks a weird line, not fully invested in negative speed to maximize Trick Room use but is generally slow enough that it works anyways. He is my Trick Room 'mega', and handles things extremely effectively. This is another odd spot that I'm trying to "optimize" and see if there is a better choice, but currently this is what I've found to be effective.
Slowking has difficulty handling things like Tyranitar, but Play Rough man handles him. The only problem comes down to speed, Ttar is way too variable to nail down even having Scarf sets floating around. This has me wondering if Mega Abomasnow is a better choice, but I found his power to be rather underwhelming in comparison to Mawile. Other Megas straddle the speed tiers a little too much for me to be confident in using them outside of Trick Room.
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With that block of text out of the way, I'm not really sure where to start polishing the team. I've run through some iterations of the hold items and moves already and this is kind of where I got stuck. I feel like there is potential to tie up the loose ends, but every time I come back to restructuring it I find myself doing a completely new team.
Any tips?
EDIT: Had the wrong ability on Slowking. Derp.
On Battle Spot the team is pretty streaky, when it works it works great and I can string together wins effectively. But I've also built up a couple of losing streaks that I think I can optimize out.
The main strategy here is to use Meowstic to create a bulky team that is hard to screw with strategy wise (status or damage), and either run Zard-Venusaur to sweep with Heat Wave and Growth'd Giga Drains or run with Slowking-Mawile and roll Trick Room. Greninja is the man in the middle right, playing a flex spot for both teams.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meowstic [Male] @ Light Clay
Prankster (Hidden Ability)
248 HP / 92 Def / 168 SpDef
Impish
-Quick Guard
-Safeguard
-Reflect
-Light Screen
Meowstic helps keep the team alive. Screens are obvious, as is Safeguard. I've really fallen in love with Quick Guard, being able to shut down turn 1 Fake Outs or Talonflame revenge kills is fantastic. Quick Guard also shuts down status moves from other Prankster users which allows me to abuse the +3 priority and invest EVs into bulk and not worry about speed wars.
However, there is some slight overlap in the use of Quick Guard and Safeguard that makes me feel like might be worth replacing Safeguard with Thunder Wave or even Psychic. Thunder Wave helps Zard sweep, but Psychic helps avoid instant losses when Meowstic is the last mon standing. Both Safeguard and Quick Guard have won me games so its really hard to make a change.
With this spread its rather hard to OHKO Meowstic, which at least ensures I'm getting Reflect and Light Screen up unless doubled up on. The only thing I think causes this set problems is faster Prankster users with Taunt, which I think limits it to Murkrows.
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Solar Power
12 HP / 248 Sp Att / 248 Speed
Modest
-Heat Wave
-Dragon Pulse
-Solar Beam
-Protect
Heat Wave all the things. Zard Y Heat Waves under the sun are scary, and sun helps Venusaur sweep and play support with faster Sleep Powders. Solar Beam and Dragon Pulse are for coverage. Modest DPs do a good chunk of damage to bulky dragons, and with screens up Zard Y is hard to kill outside of Rock Slide and Stone Edges. Protect has been situationally useful, and can sometimes be counter productive if I have all my screens and guards up. Air Slash might be better, but I usually find myself want to stack damage on both sides of the field with Heat Wave instead.
Rock Slide here is a pain, and this team doesn't have the most effective switch ins for beefy ones. Usually Protecting to get sun up and bouncing to Venusaur works (with a Reflect), but switching in doubles can be risky.
Venusaur @ Sitrus Berry
Chlorophyll (Hidden Ability)
172 HP / 248 Sp Att / 88 Speed
Timid
-Giga Drain
-Sludge Bomb
-Sleep Powder
-Growth
Half way between support and sweeper, but it can be effective. The HP has saved my ass a number of times allowing for a Growth or a Sleep Powder but the EVs might not be fully optimized. I've bounced around with the hold item a bit, starting with a Maranga Berry to try to get even bulkier on the special side but Sitrus is more flexible. Absorb Bulb is tempting, but with the reduced power of water in the sun I find few opportunities to get use out of it.
Giga and Sludge Bomb are fairly standard attacks, neither I would want to give up. SB for Fairies and GD for staying alive. Talonflame here is probably the biggest threat to Venusaur, but Meowstic with Quick Guard is handy for shutting that down. And I've yet to see any Scarf Talonflames yet.
Greninja @ Life Orb
Protean (Hidden Ability)
12 HP / 248 Sp Att / 248 Speed
Timid
-Ice Beam
-Grass Knot
-Extrasensory
-Mat Block
The weird mon for my team, him and Meow generally work on both the Sun and Trick teams. I run Mat Block here mostly due to legacy. I thought the move sounded amazing, but it ends up being a little under used in practice. I might just need to get better at using it, but I'm really tempted to replace it. I just don't know with what.
The rest of the set is about just hitting stuff hard and having decent coverage to open up the Sun/Trick team behind him. I left out water attacks due to being on Sun teams occasionally and Grass Knot seems to cover a few of the Pokemon I could use water attacks on (mainly Tyranitar).
This is the spot I feel like I can optimize with a better Pokemon the most. I've been experimenting with Conkeldurr and other fighting types, but nothing seems to really fit right.
Slowking @ Weakness Policy
Oblivious
248 HP / 12 Def / 248 Sp Att
Quiet
-Flamethrower
-Power Gem
-Psychic
-Trick Room
Instead of worrying about Trick Room (which I feel is a little less common this gen for some reason), I thought I'd build out half my team to use it. Slowking is pretty interesting, being bulky, slow, and generally hard hitting. At first I had Safety Goggles here to prevent Sleep, but Meowstic handles that for me and Weakness Policy really ratchets up his sweeping potential (thanks to being hard to kill with SE attacks).
Flamethrower and Psychic are simple choices I think. Fire Blast was replaced due to accuracy, and with a Weakness Policy boost the extra power is unnecessary. Power Gem is a bit of the funky side, mostly there to kill Charizard Y under sun where water attacks would fail to and it helps cover Talonflame.
Oblivious is to avoid Taunts preventing Trick Room from setting up.
Mawile @ Mawilite
Intimidate
248 HP / 248 Att / 12 Sp Def
Adamant
-Sucker Punch
-Play Rough
-Fire Fang
-Swords Dance
Mawile walks a weird line, not fully invested in negative speed to maximize Trick Room use but is generally slow enough that it works anyways. He is my Trick Room 'mega', and handles things extremely effectively. This is another odd spot that I'm trying to "optimize" and see if there is a better choice, but currently this is what I've found to be effective.
Slowking has difficulty handling things like Tyranitar, but Play Rough man handles him. The only problem comes down to speed, Ttar is way too variable to nail down even having Scarf sets floating around. This has me wondering if Mega Abomasnow is a better choice, but I found his power to be rather underwhelming in comparison to Mawile. Other Megas straddle the speed tiers a little too much for me to be confident in using them outside of Trick Room.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
With that block of text out of the way, I'm not really sure where to start polishing the team. I've run through some iterations of the hold items and moves already and this is kind of where I got stuck. I feel like there is potential to tie up the loose ends, but every time I come back to restructuring it I find myself doing a completely new team.
Any tips?
EDIT: Had the wrong ability on Slowking. Derp.
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