Hello there,
I would love to make an RU hazard stack bulky offense team with maybe Gastrodon and definitely Gligar, but with the pervasive use of Gweezing, Talonflame, and Noivern all running defog, it doesn't work too well.
I know I need a psychic user like Gardevoir that can't be choice scarf for switches, and I can use Lycanroc's Accelerock against Noivern and Talonflame, which kills Talonflame but only kills noivern with a choice band, and only half of the time. I can never get Lycanroc or Gardevoir in in time because I am bad at predictions, and while I am switching them in they use defog and switch out the next turn or just ohko my Gardevoir because it's not scarfed.
If you could please make a team centered around spike stack and give me a little guide of when to switch out my spikers to predict the switch in to the defogger. Also please include a spin blocker and no Jirachi.
Thanks!
Hey, thanks for your submission, spikestack is always a fun concept to build around!
I built two different teams, one with Gligar and another featuring Gastrodon, since fitting both on the same team was a bit awkward. You can try both and see which one you like more:
Gligar
https://pokepast.es/c8e2dc4df66bc6b4
Gastrodon
https://pokepast.es/1f8239ed485243dc
As you may have noticed, none of these teams have Gardevoir or Lycanroc. You can use these mons if you want to, this is by no means a must. As I understand it, you seem to be under the impression that a spikestacking teams must have mons that can switch into removers and ko them. This is mistaken. For one thing, your opponent will not let you ko their Talonflame with your Lycanroc, or their Weezing with your Gardevoir, for free. Most of the time, when staring down a Lycanroc, they will swap their Talonflame for Hippowdon or Chesnaught, and save their Talonflame for later. Likewise, when facing a Gardevoir, they will usually switch their Weezing for Jirachi, Goodra-H, or Registeel. Of course, not all teams have these mons, but that is not the point here. The point is that your opponent is not just going to lie down and let you kill their remover, unless they are forced to do so. It is, therefore, not obvious that adding a Gardevoir or a Lycanroc will make your spikestack any better into teams with removal.
Furthermore, it is not always in your interest to predict the incoming remover and double to a mon that can threaten it. This line of thinking builds on a common misconception, namely that in order to put yourself in a winning position you need to "predict" your opponents and "make reads". I understand where this rationale comes from. Sometimes, you are forced into a position where you need to aggressively call out your opponent's move. However, most of the time, you do not want to rely on guessing what your opponent will do. In the long run, it is more reliable to make moves that put you into a decent position
irrespective of what your opponent does. Again, you will sometimes be in a position where you have no choice to play guessing games, but this your option of last resort, not your immediate objective. Your game plan should not be to call every turn right. It should be to identify how you can win, what obstacles are in your way, and how you can overcome those obstacles to put yourself into a position where victory will be yours. In essence, give up on turn-based thinking and embrace long-term planning. This will not be easy, at first, and it takes lots of practice to learn, but ultimately it will make you into a much better player.
That being said, I do think you are onto something in assuming that a team should have ways of punishing removal. As such, I propose the following recipe for building spikestack teams:
- Use hazard setters beat the removers 1v1 (hence gastrodon has ice beam for noivern and cyclizar, for instance)
- Employ tools that enable you to punish rapid spinners such as Cyclizar (helmet, spinblockers, static, setting up, or killing them outright)
- Exploit mons that can punish defog (Defiant Zapdos-G/Bisharp, Competitive Empoleon)
- Ensure that you have means of disrupting mons that ignore hazards (knock, trick, etc, to deal with heavy duty boots, for instance)
- Do not build one dimensional teams. Your goal should not be to rely solely on hazards to win the game for you. Hazards help you whittle down your opponent's team by punishing switching, but you should not aim to sit there and let the hazards do the job for you. Getting up hazards can be a useful means to win, but doing so is not an end in itself. You should have other means of winning, too. Notice how, in the teams linked above, hazards play a supporting role as an instrument for weakening the checks of certain win cons - set-up mons which can win outright or scarf mons which can clean up once things have been weakened - hazards are not the focal point of the team.
Finally, keep in mind that there is no golden blueprint to follow. There are many different ways of going about building. This is not to say that building is unstructured - that people do things randomly - but rather that people have divergent preferences. So, when I propose this model for teambuilding, this is just a useful tool, a neat set of conjectures which simplify building, not the only way to approach building. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. I am happy to respond to any and all inquiries :)