Just Starting Out

Timbob968

This is the second team I have made. I have found that Zapdos that know heat wave, and fire pokemon in general can cause my team some trouble. At first I was winning about 8 out of 10 games, but recently it seems like im only winning about 6 out of 10. Any advice is appreciated. Here it is...

Machamp w/ Lumberry
Nature: Adamant
Ability: No Guard
240 HP/ 248 ATK/ 16 Spd/ 4 Spc D
Dynamic Punch
Bullet Punch
Ice Punch
Payback
I like having machamp on the team he can act as a good anti lead, and he can always work out well as a physical sweeper at the beginning of the game if things go well, and he also works well in covering Gengar's dark weakness.

Gengar w/ Life Orb
Nature: Timid
Ablility: Leviate
4 Def/ 252 Spc A and Spc D
Shadow Ball
Focus Blast
Hidden Power (Fire)
Thunderbolt
Gengar has always been one of my favorite poke's so I wanted to make sure I included him. Obviously Gengar can set up as a special sweeper, which works well because when a Gengar comes out it is very hard to predict the moveset that it has due to its vast poolset.

Heatran w/ Choice Specs
Nature: Modest
Ability: Flash Fire
40 HP/ 216 Spd/ 252 Spc A
Dragon Pulse
Fire Blast
Earth Power
Hidden Power (Grass)
I wanted to add the second special sweeper to the team, and I thought Heatran would be perfect. Heatran can take a big hit out of bulky waters with hidden power, and I needed a strong fire type to complete the coverage (works great for covering Celibi).

Suicune w/ Leftovers
Nature: Timid
Ability: Pressure
32 HP/ 224 Spd/ 252 Spc A
Calm Mind
Substitute
Surf
Ice Beam
Suicune was an iffy choice for me. I knew I wanted a strong defensive water, and I end up giving it speed and special atk EV's. This goes along with Celebi and Heatran because these three work very well to cover each others weaknesses. I usually like that when suicune is out, i get a turn to set up the substitute when the opponent makes a switch, then i get at least one calm mind and I can launch a strong offensive. I though about adding hidden power electric, but I went with ice beam over that due to my belief that suicune wont see a lot of water pokemon.

Bronzong w/ Leftovers
Nature: Sassy
Ablility: Levitate
HP 252/ Atk 86/ Def 80/ Spc D 92
Gyro Ball
Payback
Stealth Rock
Earthquake
Pretty simple reason for Bronzong, he is a a man amongst boys when it comes to having a wall. He can always come in and stealth rock, plus hes great for any psychic and rock types that come out with gyro ball and payback playing off of Bronzong's obvious speed disadvantage.

Celebi w/ Leftovers
Nature: Bold
Ability: Natural Cure
HP 252/ Def 220/ Spd 36/ Spc D 2
Grass Knot
Recover
Leech Seed
Heal Bell
Another basic reason for Celebi is his role as the team status healer/ hp healer with leech seed. I've been pleasantly surprised to find he is quite useful offensively with SR support and leech seed. Either they get rocked to death which hurts long term, or they keep getting slowly destoryed while celebi can recover with leech seed, leftovers, and recover.

Thanks for the help everyone, remember any advice is appreciate even if I completely have to rebuild this team I don't mind any criticism this team gets
 
This team is pretty good, but has one glaring weakness: Blissey. Your team is all special, excluding Machamp and Bronzong, this team is all special. Blissey can come in on anything except Machamp, who is usually dead by the point that a Blissey comes out. So I recommend changing Bronzong to Scizor, whichever set you like, as it has offensive prowess to kill of Blissey and Tyranitar, who is also a kinda big threat.

If you replace Bronzong, your team lacks Stealth Rock, which every team NEEDS. I recommened a Colbur Berry Azelf lead, as they are not neccisarily Suicide, and it provides Stealth Rock.Try a set like this over yur current Machamp lead:

Azelf @ Colbur Berry
Nature: Jolly
Ev's: 8 HP / 144 SpD / 216 Spe
Ability: Levitate
- Stealth Rock
- U-Turn
- Taunt
- Explosion

the HP ev's and the Colbur Berry allow you to survive Machamp's Payback / Bullet Punch and set up rocks hen go boom. The SpD allow you to survive Timid Heatran's Fire Blast and pretty much every other strong Special Atk in OU.

And just a nitpick, give Celebi Substitute over Recover, as you can bring it on something that will switch out and Sub up then Leech Seed. Very useful. But if you are going to try this, try Shaymin as it has more powerful attacks and doesn't have a weakness to Pursuit.
 
I like the idea for subbing in Scizor for Bronzong because i have had some struggles with Blissey (especially if they know flamethrower). And as valuable as SR is, I dont necessarily find it absolutely necessary for a team to have a SR set up. If i drop machamp for azelf, wouldn't I still be dealing with only having one physical attacker, and still be vulnerable to a Blissey?
 
Timbob968 said:
I like the idea for subbing in Scizor for Bronzong because i have had some struggles with Blissey (especially if they know flamethrower). And as valuable as SR is, I dont necessarily find it absolutely necessary for a team to have a SR set up. If i drop machamp for azelf, wouldn't I still be dealing with only having one physical attacker, and still be vulnerable to a Blissey?
Click to expand...

its basically an accepted fact that stealth rocks makes any team much much better. also changing the lead wont really affect your weaknesses since most leads die very quickly.

one solution to your bliss problem would be changing gengar to the sub-pain split version or just giving it explosion. if you wanted more insurance you could change heatran to a LO variant and put explosion on that as well.
 
jchen said:
its basically an accepted fact that stealth rocks makes any team much much better. also changing the lead wont really affect your weaknesses since most leads die very quickly.

one solution to your bliss problem would be changing gengar to the sub-pain split version or just giving it explosion. if you wanted more insurance you could change heatran to a LO variant and put explosion on that as well.
Click to expand...

I don't really want to edit Gengar or Heatran, but I do want to a physical attacker to counter a Blissey, and I was thinking maybe I could replace Suicune with something like Gyrados or maybe a Kingdra. I also like the idea for putting shaymin into the team over Celebi, but I don't necessarily know what moveset I would want to use with Shaymin. What do you guys think of that. Also I think im going to add the Azelf lead.
 
If you can manage to leech seed blissey you can send in parctucally any physical attacker due to the fact that leech seed will be recovering SOO much hp. Both shaymin and celebi have leech seed sets. Azelf can blow up on blissey, but you have to plaY mindgames to make sure you hit blissey instead of exploding on a ghost or steel. There are plenty of other good Shaymin sets though. Gyrados might be ok but be wary as it can easily get paralyzed. Kingdra doesn't work very well without rain though, so it would have to supply it itself. You might also want to consider Dragonite as it can d-dance easily outside of rain and has simply collosal attack, and is able to ko blissey with outrage after a single dd. Now the question is what to replace. Sub split gengar however will take care of blissey easily.
 
Aqueos said:
If you can manage to leech seed blissey you can send in parctucally any physical attacker due to the fact that leech seed will be recovering SOO much hp. Both shaymin and celebi have leech seed sets. Azelf can blow up on blissey, but you have to plaY mindgames to make sure you hit blissey instead of exploding on a ghost or steel. There are plenty of other good Shaymin sets though. Gyrados might be ok but be wary as it can easily get paralyzed. Kingdra doesn't work very well without rain though, so it would have to supply it itself. You might also want to consider Dragonite as it can d-dance easily outside of rain and has simply collosal attack, and is able to ko blissey with outrage after a single dd. Now the question is what to replace. Sub split gengar however will take care of blissey easily.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't mind adding Dragonite as a potent physical weapon, but I fear that if I replace Suicune for Dragonite, then I have a big weakness to Ice type attacks, I guess I would still have Heatran to cover that weakness so that could work. Ok so now I'm deciding to take the recommended Azelf lead, and add a Scizor in to take Bronzong's place, and add Dragonite to take over for Suicune. That should leave me with 2 strong special attackers (Gengar and Heatran), two strong Physical attackers (Scizor and Dragonite), the Lead Azelf who can SR and possibly scout the opponents team, and the toss up between Celebi and Shaymin. Any suggestions on movesets and choosing between Celebi and Shaymin would help a lot, but if anyone has any other suggestions feel free to share them. Thanks a lot for the help everyone
 
Yeah I have that problem too. With the current state of the metagame replacing cune is risky business, because of how powerful fire water grass cores are. One possible way out of this is to use a shaymin with a offensive set such as the growth set, or possibly an offensive set with rest. This lets you have much more freedom in what you drop, and you may be able to drop gengar in favor of a dragonite. You could of course, also use the subsplit gengar set which eats blissey alive and will survive for a really long time.
 
I'm thinking that if I drop Suicune for Dragonite, I would still have the fire resistance that Suicune provided, and Dragonite would learn waterfall and he would take his place as the water pokemon on my team (as well as knowing outrage, dd, and thunderpunch).
 
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