How do magnets work? (5th Gen OU RMT)

[RG White]

AT A GLANCE

Ok so I've been using this team for a couple of weeks now with a good amount of success. This team peaked at 1350 which isnt that great but i couldn't be bothered laddering anymore to try to get higher. (plus the variations i was getting were aweful, many +0 and +1 which got depressing) this team was originally based off of a fire-water-grass core and i added 3 other pokemon to compliment the original 3's strengths and weaknesses. this RMT is meant for aiding in the improvement of this team and i would very much appreciate any feedback on how to make it better.

Haxorus (F) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Mold Breaker
EVs: 120 HP / 248 Atk / 140 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake

This team really needed a heavy hitting phsyical attacker.I used many different pokemon in this spot untill i finally decided on haxorus. Haxorus is VERY dangerous after a boost and is capable of ripping through many unprepared teams. this is a haxorus with a standard double dance moveset and a bulkier EV spread. i decided to go with the extra bulk because it allows for haxorus to switch in more often and set up easier. lum berry is the item for obvious reasons such as curing burns and outrage caused confusions.

Heatran (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
- Protect

Heatran was one of the first pokemon i considered and easily won the position of fire type on this team. as the team building process went on, i realized i had a huge fire weakness. and Heatran remedies this very well. This heatran is specially bulky in order to take the common specs draco meteors among various other special moves. heatran also has decent physical bulk even un invested which allows it to take must neutral and resisted hits with ease. heatran is very good at getting stealth rocks up which really boosts alakazam and starmies abilities to sweep. in the third slot im really considering using earth power but i dont want to leave my team without a phazer.

Starmie @ Life Orb
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Rapid Spin
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam

Starmie was the first thing i thought of when building this team. This Starmie is a very important member of my team utilizing its great speed, coverage and rapid spin. my team is not overly weak to entry hazards but its still nice to get them out of the way. starmie is not as frail as you might think and can easily switch in on a variety of attacks. Starmies great coverage is its best asset finishing off damaged teams with its speed and ability to hit super effective often.

Magnezone @ Leftovers
Trait: Magnet Pull
EVs: 36 HP / 252 SAtk / 220 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Substitute
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Charge Beam

magnezone plays an important role on this team. Many of my team member lure in steel types. this can be used to my advantage with magnezone, in fact magnezone can switch in on just about any steel type, set up sub and then boost its sp.attack with charge beam. hp fire is there to hit scizor, ferro and forretress for massive damage. magnezone can hit hard even at +1 and can ohko or 2hko many things, a sub defiantly helps in this, protecting magnezone from a powerful attack

Alakazam (F) @ Life Orb
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball
- Signal Beam
- Hidden Power [Fire]

This is my late game sweeper. magic guard is so useful, shielding alakazam from residual damage, life orb recoil and poison. alakazam is really fast and can hit very hard. the moveset ive been playing around with, i like hp fire as i can take out common 4x weakness to fire pokemon such as ferro and scizor. signal beam is used because it ohkos celebi and hydrigon (the latter being one of the biggest threats to this team)

Ferrothorn (F) @ Rocky Helmet
Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 176 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Leech Seed
- Spikes
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball

this is my main physical wall. i prefer rocky helmet over leftovers because with iron barbs and rocky helmet, you will be doing a considerable amount of damage to your opponent every turn (a signifigant amount more if you factor in leech seed and life orb recoil). spikes are always nice to have around, and power whip and gyro ball can do a good amount of damage with their dual STABs.

thanks for reading my RMT and i hope you leave me some feedback =D

 

[Earthduster]

Hi RG White,

Welcome to Smogon! This is a fairly solid team you have. Between Heatran and Ferro, you've got decent checks to both Rain and Sun. On the offensive side, both Haxorus and Alakazam are very threatening sweepers and, coupled with Magnezone, can put a lot of pressure on your opponent.

Unfortunately, I feel that the team has numerous problems with some common threats in the metagame. Terrakion can give you a significant amount of trouble. Since no pokemon on your team can take its attacks, you rely on either Starmie or Alakazam to revenge it. However, this places you at a disadvantage since Terrakion can simply switch out and Alazakam in particular can easily be trapped by Ttar. With some Hazards, Life Orb Rock Polish Terrakion also runs through the team. In a similar manner, no pokemon on your team is capable of switching into Keldeo. For these reasons, I think you would be greatly aided by Focus Blast on Alakazam and Focus Sash > Life Orb. This not only lets you get past Ttar but also lets you reliably revenge kill some troublesome fighting types.

Also, given that your team lacks any scarfers OR priority, a standard Offensive DD Dragonite sporting Outrage/Dragon Claw, Fire Punch, and Earthquake destroys this entire team at +1. You'll be relying on baiting Outrages which is not consistent against good battlers. Volcarona with HP Ground also cleans this team up handily at +1. Another point of interest is that Life Orb Tornadus outspeeds and 2HKOs every member of your team. This is very devastating for your team as Tornadus-T is a very common threat in this metagame.

In order to revenge these threats, you'll be needing a scarfer with a powerful Rock or Ice type move. In my opinion, Scarf Terrakion works incredibly well on this team, and can fit over Starmie. Starmie doesn't seem to be doing much for your team, as while it has decent coverage, Rapid Spin isn't really needed on this team at all (1 pokemon is immune to all hazards, 3 resist Stealth Rock, 2 are Neutral and only 1 is hurt by Toxic Spikes). Scarf Terrakion also sports much better speed and can reliably revenge threats that have managed to get +1 speed boosts. It is also important to note that it can outspeed a Chlorophyll Venusaur in Sun, which can aid you incredibly in battles against Sun teams if your Heatran gets trapped by Dugtrio.

Happy team building and good luck!

 

[RG White]

Hi RG White,

Welcome to Smogon! This is a fairly solid team you have. Between Heatran and Ferro, you've got decent checks to both Rain and Sun. On the offensive side, both Haxorus and Alakazam are very threatening sweepers and, coupled with Magnezone, can put a lot of pressure on your opponent.

Unfortunately, I feel that the team has numerous problems with some common threats in the metagame. Terrakion can give you a significant amount of trouble. Since no pokemon on your team can take its attacks, you rely on either Starmie or Alakazam to revenge it. However, this places you at a disadvantage since Terrakion can simply switch out and Alazakam in particular can easily be trapped by Ttar. With some Hazards, Life Orb Rock Polish Terrakion also runs through the team. In a similar manner, no pokemon on your team is capable of switching into Keldeo. For these reasons, I think you would be greatly aided by Focus Blast on Alakazam and Focus Sash > Life Orb. This not only lets you get past Ttar but also lets you reliably revenge kill some troublesome fighting types.

Also, given that your team lacks any scarfers OR priority, a standard Offensive DD Dragonite sporting Outrage/Dragon Claw, Fire Punch, and Earthquake destroys this entire team at +1. You'll be relying on baiting Outrages which is not consistent against good battlers. Volcarona with HP Ground also cleans this team up handily at +1. Another point of interest is that Life Orb Tornadus outspeeds and 2HKOs every member of your team. This is very devastating for your team as Tornadus-T is a very common threat in this metagame.

In order to revenge these threats, you'll be needing a scarfer with a powerful Rock or Ice type move. In my opinion, Scarf Terrakion works incredibly well on this team, and can fit over Starmie. Starmie doesn't seem to be doing much for your team, as while it has decent coverage, Rapid Spin isn't really needed on this team at all (1 pokemon is immune to all hazards, 3 resist Stealth Rock, 2 are Neutral and only 1 is hurt by Toxic Spikes). Scarf Terrakion also sports much better speed and can reliably revenge threats that have managed to get +1 speed boosts. It is also important to note that it can outspeed a Chlorophyll Venusaur in Sun, which can aid you incredibly in battles against Sun teams if your Heatran gets trapped by Dugtrio.

Happy team building and good luck!

thanks for the feedback! its funny that you mention scarf terrakion, i run it on nearly all my OU teams except this team haha. i will defiantly consider replacing starmie with terrakion as rapidspin isn't really necessary. ill experiment with focus sash on alakazam but i think life orb is an overall better item due to magic guard.

 

[Escavalier]

thanks for the feedback! its funny that you mention scarf terrakion, i run it on nearly all my OU teams except this team haha. i will defiantly consider replacing starmie with terrakion as rapidspin isn't really necessary. ill experiment with focus sash on alakazam but i think life orb is an overall better item due to magic guard.

Magic Guard is the reason why you should run Focus Sash on Alakazam, as the Sash isn't broken by entry hazards, status or passive weather.

 

[RG White]

Magic Guard is the reason why you should run Focus Sash on Alakazam, as the Sash isn't broken by entry hazards, status or passive weather.

I understand that, but won't i miss the extra power life orb gives?

 

[Harsha]

yo,

cool team man. it seems like you tried to make a balanced team out of offensive pokemon, so there are a few things that i'd point out are making your team harder to use. now, for your fire / water / grass core, i think that ferrothorn really isn't pulling its weight. the premise behind this team is getting down your hazards and attempting to trap steel-types with magnezone, eventually allowing you to sweep with haxorus or alakazam. however, ferrothorn can kill your offensive momentum; for this reason, i believe the use of virizion over ferrothorn is merited. i'd go with the swords dance set that runs 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe and a jolly nature, along with swords dance, leaf blade, close combat, and stone edge. either a lum berry or leftovers would work fine, though a lum berry would help a lot with scald if starmie goes down. this makes you both a lot stronger against rain stall and tyranitar, who can really do some damage against your team.

now your alakazam set is stumping me. sure, signal beam hits celebi harder; however, that's about it. i'd probably just use the standard focus blast instead, and because this gives you coverage against scizor and ferrothorn, you can opt for hidden power ice instead of hidden power fire to give you a good method of defeating gliscor. while i did mention that your team is fairly offensive, i have to say i'm really not a big fan of life orb starmie at all. sure you'll do a ton of damage to tyranitar with life orb. however, you're going to be 2HKOing tyranitar with leftovers anyways, so i'd just go with those. hydro pump would be merited with the item switch to keep up a ton of power. finally, with all of these pokemon to take hits for you, running a spread of 36 HP / 252 Atk / 220 Spe on haxorus would be really good because you keep up your speed while you still live through an ice shard from mamoswine. there isn't much use in that bulk anyways. overall, pretty cool team man. good luck, and i hope i helped!

 

[RG White]

yo,

cool team man. it seems like you tried to make a balanced team out of offensive pokemon, so there are a few things that i'd point out are making your team harder to use. now, for your fire / water / grass core, i think that ferrothorn really isn't pulling its weight. the premise behind this team is getting down your hazards and attempting to trap steel-types with magnezone, eventually allowing you to sweep with haxorus or alakazam. however, ferrothorn can kill your offensive momentum; for this reason, i believe the use of virizion over ferrothorn is merited. i'd go with the swords dance set that runs 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe and a jolly nature, along with swords dance, leaf blade, close combat, and stone edge. either a lum berry or leftovers would work fine, though a lum berry would help a lot with scald if starmie goes down. this makes you both a lot stronger against rain stall and tyranitar, who can really do some damage against your team.

now your alakazam set is stumping me. sure, signal beam hits celebi harder; however, that's about it. i'd probably just use the standard focus blast instead, and because this gives you coverage against scizor and ferrothorn, you can opt for hidden power ice instead of hidden power fire to give you a good method of defeating gliscor. while i did mention that your team is fairly offensive, i have to say i'm really not a big fan of life orb starmie at all. sure you'll do a ton of damage to tyranitar with life orb. however, you're going to be 2HKOing tyranitar with leftovers anyways, so i'd just go with those. hydro pump would be merited with the item switch to keep up a ton of power. finally, with all of these pokemon to take hits for you, running a spread of 36 HP / 252 Atk / 220 Spe on haxorus would be really good because you keep up your speed while you still live through an ice shard from mamoswine. there isn't much use in that bulk anyways. overall, pretty cool team man. good luck, and i hope i helped!

i agree with you that ferrothorn should be replaced, ill try out verizion but i was thinking about jirachi in that spot as well. i dont like using focus blast because it always seems to miss when you desperately need it to hit. ill experiment with lefties on starmie but accuracy might prove to be an issue again with hydro pump.