This team has been pretty successful in UU. It has brought my score up to 1500. So here we go.
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Team at a glance:
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Spiritomb (M) @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 244 HP/48 Atk/12 Spd/204 SAtk
Quiet nature (+SAtk, -Spd)
- Shadow Ball
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Shadow Sneak
- Pursuit
This lead has been very successful. I notice often times people will think it's a more defensive type of spiritomb and use taunt on it as the first move, giving me a free hit with a shadow ball or HP Fighting. Being immune to normal and fighting attacks also makes it very helpful against leads that use fake-out. Shadow sneak definitely helps finish people off as shadow ball usually does a good amount of damage. It's usually easy to predict a switch out if someone uses Stealth rock and I damaged a little more than half of their health.
This guy is pretty much always able to take down the lead, or least kill one opponent before it dies. I prefer spooky plate over leftovers since he's not particularly bulky, and not life orb because he's bulky enough to take a hit and I don't want the health loss to ruin that.
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Claydol @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP/144 Def/114 SAtk
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam
- Stealth Rock
- Rapid Spin
By being bulky physically, and resists rock and fighting, and immune to ground, he's pretty good at absorbing blows he's resistant too. His levitate ability and ground typing makes him less susceptible to the field traps that he spins away. Ice beam helps me defeat donphan, and torterra if it's already weakened some and not many speed EV's. Earth power is very helpful to kill these physically defensive pokemon like aggron and steelix.
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Rotom @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP/252 Def/4 SAtk
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Discharge
- Will-o-wisp
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
A very good status absorber. Though I concentrated its defenses on physical defense, it is often OHKO'd by someone using a SD'd neutral damaging attack. Usually I try to will-o-wisp them which solves the problem. I usually try to burn physical attackers, ground types, and walls with non-rest healing abilities, to add more damage to them, forcing them to heal more. Discharge usually used as a damaging move with the higher chance to paralyze as a bonus, helps out a lot with water types, assuming rotom survives. Having another levitate and another ghost just gives me another person to switch to if I expect a fake-out or EQ.
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Hitmontop (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 Def
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Fake Out
- Mach Punch
- Bullet Punch
- Close Combat
This is the guy that saves my team from pokemon that are very fast and very powerful. I don't use life orb because he dies way too quickly and often he is needed the entire match, so he's often the last one to day on my team. Fake out and bullet punch will do about the same amount of damage, so it's easy to tell if a bullet punch after the fake out will be enough to finish off the opponent. Mach punch does about 50% a little more damage than fake out due to the stab, so it's also easy to estimate if mach punch will be enough to kill an opponent. Close combat is there mainly to hit the slow opponents that are weak against it, like clefable, chansey, aggron, or if the opponent uses wish and/or I expect a switch next turn.
Often times what I find myself doing though is that if the opponent is very powerful and particularly bulky, I often use fake-out, and switch to another poke to take the hit and die(usually) and switch back to hitmontop, use fake-out,and if there is too much health, I'll switch out to a different one to take the hit, etc...This potentially causes me to lose many members of my team because of how much I value this member of the team :p
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Lanturn (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 40 HP/76 Def/140 SAtk/252 SDef
Calm nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Thunder Wave
Being able to resist water, fire, and absorb electric attacks has helped out greatly in taking blows from moltres, and a good counter to water types in general. I often use t-wave when I predict a switch so my counter I switch to would be definitely faster. I usually don't like putting him against physical attackers though, even fire based ones like arcanine.
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Drapion (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Battle Armor
EVs: 252 HP/4 Atk/252 SDef
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Taunt
- Crunch
- Knock Off
- Whirlwind
His relatively high base speed (95) usually makes him faster than walls I tend to put him up against, like umbreon and spiritomb. Being able to taunt those that give status affects is very helpful. He often gets burned, but doing damage isn't the real reason he's on the team anyway. Whirlwind is very helpful and blowing away substitutes and stat raises, and knock off is just handy against walls with leftovers. Being specially defensive makes him a good counter against Mismagius and being poison type makes him good choice against defensive pokemon that I know have toxic, since they tend only to have one kind of status move.
OVERALL:
Usually how a games comes out is that I kill the lead with spiritomb. Sometimes they are able to do a weather affect, set up a stealth rock or spikes, do some damage to spiritomb, or sometimes accomplish nothing at all (usually happens if they taunt). If they switch to someone I expect a status affect from, I switch to rotom, but I often stay in and attack the second person with spiritomb too. I usually don't switch out spiritomb unless one of my pokes is a very good counter against the opponent. Drapion usually takes the annoying walls with a lot of non-damaging moves. Lanturn takes on special attacks using water, fire, thunder, or flying attacks or those with T-wave. I usually use hitmontop as the revenge killer or switch to him if I expect a stat up move from an opponent that hitmontop does at least neutral damage to. I usually only send in claydol when I find an opening to set up stealth rocks.
Problems:
Since none of my pokemon are particularly fast, it is only every now and then I am able to do some good sweeping (only with hitmontop with this priority moves and against slow pokes). This also gives me a hard time against sturdy sweepers that don't even need to be that fast to out-speed my team.
I also come upon many situations where I wish I had someone with heal bell. Even with rotom as my status absorber, there are certain opponents that uses status effects that I feel comfortable sending rotom out against (basically ghosts and dark types that have status moves). So I usually end up sending out drapion or spiritomb instead, but if they get status (particularly burned), that makes it hard to counter those very ghost and dark type status users as spiritomb and drapion are my main counters against them.
As for specific pokes that give me a hard time...
Mainly the SD version with max speed EV's. Power whip after an SD pretty much OHKO's everybody except for drapion, which he would just kill with EQ. How I usually kill this when it is able to get an SD up is simply by using fake-out with hitmontop, switch to a different poke to take the hit, bring hitmontop back in to fake-out...etc...until it dies. Normally many of my team members are dead by the time it dies. Basically the first problem I have above.
If it's in the rain, and used SD, this can sweep my entire team. It has happened only once when I never saw it before, not every time I see a kabutops, I make sure to do as much damage to it as possible. Even though it only swept me one time, it could happen again.
Those that know will-o-wisp drive me crazy. Normally I send rotom to take status affects, but since this thing can use shadow ball, it will OHKO rotom. Basically the exact problem stated above about me wanting a heal bell.
more problems coming if I think of any...
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Team at a glance:
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Spiritomb (M) @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 244 HP/48 Atk/12 Spd/204 SAtk
Quiet nature (+SAtk, -Spd)
- Shadow Ball
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Shadow Sneak
- Pursuit
This lead has been very successful. I notice often times people will think it's a more defensive type of spiritomb and use taunt on it as the first move, giving me a free hit with a shadow ball or HP Fighting. Being immune to normal and fighting attacks also makes it very helpful against leads that use fake-out. Shadow sneak definitely helps finish people off as shadow ball usually does a good amount of damage. It's usually easy to predict a switch out if someone uses Stealth rock and I damaged a little more than half of their health.
This guy is pretty much always able to take down the lead, or least kill one opponent before it dies. I prefer spooky plate over leftovers since he's not particularly bulky, and not life orb because he's bulky enough to take a hit and I don't want the health loss to ruin that.
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Claydol @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP/144 Def/114 SAtk
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Earth Power
- Ice Beam
- Stealth Rock
- Rapid Spin
By being bulky physically, and resists rock and fighting, and immune to ground, he's pretty good at absorbing blows he's resistant too. His levitate ability and ground typing makes him less susceptible to the field traps that he spins away. Ice beam helps me defeat donphan, and torterra if it's already weakened some and not many speed EV's. Earth power is very helpful to kill these physically defensive pokemon like aggron and steelix.
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Rotom @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP/252 Def/4 SAtk
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Discharge
- Will-o-wisp
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
A very good status absorber. Though I concentrated its defenses on physical defense, it is often OHKO'd by someone using a SD'd neutral damaging attack. Usually I try to will-o-wisp them which solves the problem. I usually try to burn physical attackers, ground types, and walls with non-rest healing abilities, to add more damage to them, forcing them to heal more. Discharge usually used as a damaging move with the higher chance to paralyze as a bonus, helps out a lot with water types, assuming rotom survives. Having another levitate and another ghost just gives me another person to switch to if I expect a fake-out or EQ.
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Hitmontop (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 Def
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Fake Out
- Mach Punch
- Bullet Punch
- Close Combat
This is the guy that saves my team from pokemon that are very fast and very powerful. I don't use life orb because he dies way too quickly and often he is needed the entire match, so he's often the last one to day on my team. Fake out and bullet punch will do about the same amount of damage, so it's easy to tell if a bullet punch after the fake out will be enough to finish off the opponent. Mach punch does about 50% a little more damage than fake out due to the stab, so it's also easy to estimate if mach punch will be enough to kill an opponent. Close combat is there mainly to hit the slow opponents that are weak against it, like clefable, chansey, aggron, or if the opponent uses wish and/or I expect a switch next turn.
Often times what I find myself doing though is that if the opponent is very powerful and particularly bulky, I often use fake-out, and switch to another poke to take the hit and die(usually) and switch back to hitmontop, use fake-out,and if there is too much health, I'll switch out to a different one to take the hit, etc...This potentially causes me to lose many members of my team because of how much I value this member of the team :p
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Lanturn (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 40 HP/76 Def/140 SAtk/252 SDef
Calm nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Thunder Wave
Being able to resist water, fire, and absorb electric attacks has helped out greatly in taking blows from moltres, and a good counter to water types in general. I often use t-wave when I predict a switch so my counter I switch to would be definitely faster. I usually don't like putting him against physical attackers though, even fire based ones like arcanine.
---
Drapion (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Battle Armor
EVs: 252 HP/4 Atk/252 SDef
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Taunt
- Crunch
- Knock Off
- Whirlwind
His relatively high base speed (95) usually makes him faster than walls I tend to put him up against, like umbreon and spiritomb. Being able to taunt those that give status affects is very helpful. He often gets burned, but doing damage isn't the real reason he's on the team anyway. Whirlwind is very helpful and blowing away substitutes and stat raises, and knock off is just handy against walls with leftovers. Being specially defensive makes him a good counter against Mismagius and being poison type makes him good choice against defensive pokemon that I know have toxic, since they tend only to have one kind of status move.
OVERALL:
Usually how a games comes out is that I kill the lead with spiritomb. Sometimes they are able to do a weather affect, set up a stealth rock or spikes, do some damage to spiritomb, or sometimes accomplish nothing at all (usually happens if they taunt). If they switch to someone I expect a status affect from, I switch to rotom, but I often stay in and attack the second person with spiritomb too. I usually don't switch out spiritomb unless one of my pokes is a very good counter against the opponent. Drapion usually takes the annoying walls with a lot of non-damaging moves. Lanturn takes on special attacks using water, fire, thunder, or flying attacks or those with T-wave. I usually use hitmontop as the revenge killer or switch to him if I expect a stat up move from an opponent that hitmontop does at least neutral damage to. I usually only send in claydol when I find an opening to set up stealth rocks.
Problems:
Since none of my pokemon are particularly fast, it is only every now and then I am able to do some good sweeping (only with hitmontop with this priority moves and against slow pokes). This also gives me a hard time against sturdy sweepers that don't even need to be that fast to out-speed my team.
I also come upon many situations where I wish I had someone with heal bell. Even with rotom as my status absorber, there are certain opponents that uses status effects that I feel comfortable sending rotom out against (basically ghosts and dark types that have status moves). So I usually end up sending out drapion or spiritomb instead, but if they get status (particularly burned), that makes it hard to counter those very ghost and dark type status users as spiritomb and drapion are my main counters against them.
As for specific pokes that give me a hard time...
Mainly the SD version with max speed EV's. Power whip after an SD pretty much OHKO's everybody except for drapion, which he would just kill with EQ. How I usually kill this when it is able to get an SD up is simply by using fake-out with hitmontop, switch to a different poke to take the hit, bring hitmontop back in to fake-out...etc...until it dies. Normally many of my team members are dead by the time it dies. Basically the first problem I have above.
If it's in the rain, and used SD, this can sweep my entire team. It has happened only once when I never saw it before, not every time I see a kabutops, I make sure to do as much damage to it as possible. Even though it only swept me one time, it could happen again.
Those that know will-o-wisp drive me crazy. Normally I send rotom to take status affects, but since this thing can use shadow ball, it will OHKO rotom. Basically the exact problem stated above about me wanting a heal bell.
more problems coming if I think of any...
