(Insert Awesome Name) 4th Gen OU RMT

Gengar105

Well, this is my first RMT so it may not 100% rules compliant and I'm also entirely new to competitive pokemon, so any suggestions on any threats I've missed would be welcome.

I'm trying to have a balanced team with some good offensive players and a few key defensive ones in the form of a FWG core.




So here it is:
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The breakdown:
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Heatran (M) @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 Spd/252 SpAtk/4 SpDef
Timid nature (+Spd,-Atk)
- Earth Power
- Flamethrower
- Stealth Rock
- Taunt
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His job is pretty simple, to set up Stealth Rock and prevent other leads from doing the same thanks to Taunt. I decided to go with Flamethrower over Fire Blast because of accuracy issues. As we all know, Heatran attracts Ground and Fighting attacks like bees to honey, and he will also get quite a few water pokemon coming in on him. Thankfully, I have Celebi, who is resistant to all those things.

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Celebi @ Life Orb
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 232 HP/36 Spd/240 SpAtk
Modest nature (+SpAtk,-Atk)
- Hidden Power Fire
- Leaf Storm
- Recover
- Thunder Wave
---
Celebi is a key support player. Thunder Wave cripples my opponent and make it easier for me to set up/sweep. HP Fire is for mainly for Scizor and the other steel types. Leaf Storm allows it to come in and do massive damage. Recover helps mitigate LO damage.

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Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP/224 Spd/32 SpAtk
Timid nature (+Spd,-Atk)
- Calm Mind
- Roar
- Substitute
- Surf
---
This Suicune is to do one thing: take hits like a champ and dish it back. Suicune makes a substitute and then uses Calm Mind to make that 101 HP Substitute more resistant. Roar is to force switches and to take out counters. At the moment, I'm considering using ResTalk Suicune seeing as how this set lacks a recovery move.

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Scizor (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP/252 Atk/8 Spd
Adamant nature (+Atk,-SpAtk)
- Bullet Punch
- Pursuit
- Superpower
- U-turn
---
My physical revenge killer, this moveset gives him tools to finish a variety of foes. Technician boosted Bullet Punch combined with his huge attack stat will finish off or severely cripple most foes. Technician Pursuit will make several Ghost types face a dilemma: stay and try to cripple Scizor and die or try to switch. And die. Superpower is for Blissey and other pokemon that are weak to physical attacks. U-turn allows me to scout and does a good amount of damage. His low speed means that the switch in from U-Turn won't be damaged.

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Starmie @ Choice Specs
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP/252 Spd/252 SpAtk
Modest nature (+SpAtk,-Atk)
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
---
My rapid spinner and also packs a big punch. It wields the infamous BoltBeam combo and a STAB Surf. I chose Surf over Hydro Pump for the same reason I chose Flamethrower over Fire Blast. Missing sucks....
I overcome the damage difference between Surf and Hydro Pump with Choice Specs, unfortunately that limits what he can really do, so I'm considering Life Orb. I'm also considering a Timid nature so it can go before other base 115 pokemon.

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Gengar (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def/252 Spd/252 SpAtk
Timid nature (+Spd,-Atk)
- Focus Blast
- Pain Split
- Shadow Ball
- Substitute
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One of my favorite pokemon, as one can tell by my username, is also my spinblocker and with this set he'll be a major pain to my opponent. Substitute protects him from attacks, and Shadow Ball and Focus Blast give me neutral coverage. The low accuracy from Focus Blast bothers me, but unfortunately Gengar can't learn Aura Sphere (aka Hadouken), but I digress. Pain Split helps mitigate the HP lost from Substitute and Life Orb, as well as helping Gengar overcome Blissey and other special walls.


That's it. Thank you for your time and commentary is welcome!
 
Hello and welcome to Smogon! For a first attempt, this definitely isn't bad- many people (myself included) have much worse looking first-teams. As far as synergy goes, the team actually isn't that bad. The thing about rating the teams of newer players is that, no matter how we restructure it, you aren't really going to gain anything- the best way to fix your problems is experience, and that isn't something I can give it you. The best thing I can do is shove you in the right direction. Let me tell you, cool gimmicks and new sets are really awesome if they work well- but if you're brand new, it's usually best to stick to "Smogon analysis" sets until you have a good grasp of the metagame. As such, some of your more creative sets are unfortunately a little underwhelming, so I'll try to help you patch those up. Just keep at it and all of your teams, both this one and future ones, will see improvement.

First up is Heatran. Taunt may seem like a good idea, but in reality you have better options. The only time it becomes terribly important to make sure that your opponent doesn't get SR up is if you have pokemon weak to it- which this team doesn't. The other problem is that Heatran isn't actually faster than that many leads, and those he is faster against he is usually better off just getting SR up on and/or attacking. I'd recommend changing Taunt to Hidden Power Grass, to hit bulky waters as well as Swampert leads for solid damage. Hidden Power Electric can also work, and better in most cases- but then you are walled by Swampert, so your choice there.

Secondly, Suicune. That set is probably doing more than it can handle. Trying to set up a CM sweep, roaring away counters and continuously setting up substitutes are not compatible, and Suicune will just get worn down too quickly, especially if sandstorm is going. Running a simple Offensive CM set, with the same spread if you prefer, will not only increase the sweeping potential of your Cune; it will actually increase the longevity, as Substitutes without a recovery move can take a quick toll on you.

Lastly you might consider changing Starmie to the standard Timid LO version. The extra speed is extremely important for threats like Gengar, who can outspeed you and damage the frail special attacker majorly. The other thing is that Starmie's potential as a cleaner or stall breaker comes from his ability to change attacks- this allows him to beat fwg cores as well as stall cores much more effectively with little to no prediction necessary. You might be concerned that LO decreases his bulk, but this is unimportant for two reasons- a, Starmie is already so frail than most hits are doing major damage anyway, and b, if you want you can actually run Recover over Ice Beam or Rapid Spin, something you couldn't do on the Specs set that actually INCREASES his longevity.

And that's all the advice I have. One thing to remember, if you're new to this forum and if you haven't lurked, is that you shouldn't take my advice for granted- you have the right to criticize or deny my advice, and before making any changes to your team, you should always test them to see if they are beneficial- I could be some random guy saying "USE CHARIZARD HE'S COOL" or "MY FAVOURITE POKEMON IS PIDGEOT, SOO MUCH COOLER THAN SUICUNE". Even if I'm not, I haven't used your team before and I don't know how it operates in the field, as opposed to "on paper", so you may have a particular reason for doing what you do that isn't immediately apparent to me. Of course, this doesn't mean that all raters are morons- au contraire, you'll find some very intelligent advice in this forum that you would be wise to employ. Just make sure you know the difference. I wish you good luck, and I hope this helps!
 
Hi there:) Congrats on making your first RMT!

Overall this is definitely not a bad attempt. However, there are quite a few synergy issues, mostly based on typing.

First of all, you have major Tyranitar problems. 3 of your pokemon can be trapped and killed by Pursuit, and possibly even worse, you have no Rock resist. This means that Tyranitar can simply spam Stone Edge and, once Scizor is gone (CB Tar's Stone Edge actually can OHKO Scizor after some residual damage), most Tyranitar variants will be getting a kill every time they come in.

The current metagame is extremely weak to Electric typed offense, and your team follows this trend. Celebi is your lone Electric resist, and is weak to Shadow Ball, carried by Rotom-A, Jolteon and Raikou, commonly; and Celebi can't do anything to SubRoost Zapdos. Weaken Celebi a bit, and things like Sub-Life Orb Jolteon can easily sweep.

Those are your main problems. Other things, like Gyarados with Taunt, can also be extremely difficult for your team, but you can deal with those later.

The main fix that I'd recommend is replacing Starmie with a Choice Scarf Flygon, which helps immensely with your major issues. Use the moveset Outrage, U-turn, Earthquake, and Thunderpunch. This immediately mitigates a lot of your issues, and Flygon has excellent synergy with Scizor as an offensive U-turn combo.

The other thing is your Suicune, which you asked for help with. Substitute and Roar together don't work particularly well on Suicune, so as I see it you have two main options (assuming you keep Suicune; something like Wish Vaporeon would also work well). The first is a defensive Rest Talk set: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Speed, Bold nature, with the moves Rest, Sleep Talk, Surf and Roar.
The second option is to go offensive, which you can do in a couple of ways. The standard Calm Mind + Ice Beam + Surf + HP Electric works well, or the SubCM set, which I think you altered slightly to get your current set. Even a ChestoRest set could work very well here.

Anyway, all those things are matters of opinion, except for Flygon. Use Flygon, then go from there and see which direction you want to take the team in.


EDIT: Smith got in before me :) I agree with his opinion on Taunt on Heatran, btw. LO Starmie, as he suggested, still leaves you open to a vast number of problems with Scarf Flygon fixes, though, so IMO Flygon >>> Starmie.
 
Smith said:
For a first attempt, this definitely isn't bad- many people (myself included) have much worse looking first-teams.
Click to expand...
Sucks for you, my first team was awesome :P
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Take Smith's suggestions, they're good and fix up a lot of your weaknesses. Two problems I can see even after those changes are stall teams and Pursuit users (especially defensive ScarfTar teams like KG Stall). Half your team is weak to Pursuit, which can be easily exploited by a good player. Fixing these two problems is pretty simple, however; just swap out Celebi for a Leech Seed Shaymin, as shown below.

Shaymin @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 68 SAtk / 188 Spd
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Leech Seed
- Protect
- Seed Flare
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Shaymin basically does everything that Celebi does, without adding an additional Pursuit weakness. The only thing you miss out on is Thunder Wave, but Leech Seed is far more useful for combating stall and healing teammates. Protect helps to stall out more turns of Leech Seed, as well as scout opposing attacks.

Good luck!
 
Thanks to all of your for helping me with this.

@Smith: I'll probably take you up on HP Grass on Heatran. Seeing as how he is slower then most leads and by the time he Taunts it's probably too late. And I was thinking about that set as shown in the original post. Though bubbly has given me a good idea about flygon....

@bubbly: I thought about that while I was making this team. It's like part Psychic, part Psychic, part Ghost; pokemon that have strong Dark moves are gonna be a pain... but I didn't know how to fix it so I left it to Smogon.

That Suicune set I have is the defensive variant of the SubCM Suicune, it's listed under there on the Suicune page here on Smogon.

@Faladran: I will look into Shaymin. Thank you very much for the suggestion!
 
I prefer Shaymin to Starmie, as Faladran says, as it gives you a decent switch to most Electric types. I just hate the issues it gives you with Tyranitar, basically, but if you think you can cover him then Shaymin is good. With Shaymin on board, you're getting to the point where you can say: "I don't have anything which can take Tyranitar's attack, but most of the time it won't matter because it can only switch in to Heatran safely". Tyranitar's Crunch isn't the big issue, Gengar105, its Stone Edge and Pursuit, Stone Edge because of your zero rock resists.
 
Tyranitar has been on my mind seeing as how it gets STAB Pursuit and Stone Edge combined with its massive attack stat. But you're right, he really can't come in on anyone without taking some damage. Gengar and Scizor have high powered Fighting attacks, Suicune has Surf, and Shaymin has Seed Flare.

And I'm assuming the Flygon you suggested is the Choice Scarf variant?
 
Yeah, Choice Scarf Flygon:)
Apart from Tyranitar, you have some issues with faster threats. A Bulky Gyarados with Taunt should be able to sweep your current team pretty easily, among other threats, and Flygon really helps out.
 
I've been playing a few matches and one of my bigger annoyances has been Gyarados and Zapdos.

Gyarados sets up as I switch to my counter and then proceeds to murder it.

Zapdos is typically SubRoost and as such is a huge annoyance.

I've also made some major changes.

Scizor wasn't cutting the mustard with his low speed so I'm currently using Scarf Tyranitar as my revenge killer and I am very pleased. The Sandstorm he kicks up is very good at passive damage and helping me get the OHKO and his stats are amazing, even with the mistake I made of putting 252 EVs into Sp.Atk instead of Atk! :P Though the fact it negates my Leftovers is annoying, but I digress.

My Heatran, though very reliable, is just too slow and thus gets Taunted easily. So he's no longer in the lead position. I'm also experimenting with Fire Blast since a lot of 2HKO's can now be OHKO's.

I'm got tired of being walled by Blissey and other special walls and since I only really have one physical attacker and also I since I needed a lead, I decided to use Metagross with the moveset of Meteor Mash, Bullet Punch, Earthquake, and Explosion. And it has been very satisfactory. Most expect him to set up SR and so they Taunt him and get a Meteor Mash to the face. :)

Suicune just has the standard SubCM set now with an offensive EV spread.

I also noticed that I was having major problems with Flying types (Zapdos....) mostly because they have Roost. And sadly my namesake couldn't deal with them. So I decided that Rotom would be a very good counter in general and also a very good spinblocker. After looking at my team in general and seeing I lacked a strong counter to Dragon and Flying Pokemon, I thought Rotom-F(?)(whatever the fridge one is) and a Choice Scarf with the moveset Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Blizzard, and Will-O-Wisp would work well and it has so far. If they switch in Tyranitar on my Heatran, and use EQ, I switch to Rotom and burn it, then switch to a real counter like Shaymin.

So currently its: Metagross, Heatran, Shaymin, Suicune, Tyranitar, and Rotom.

While I don't have a spinner, I'm not that worried about it since none of my pokemon take more then normal damage from SR. Spikes are annoying however, but I digress.
 
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