BDSP Battle Tower Discussion & Records

[TheReflexWonder]

I've spent a lot of my Tower time up to this point trying different variations of a lead crippler strategy and wanted to bring one particular 'Mon up because of how much it manages to get done... Shuckle.

It gets an incredible amount of utility options, many of which weren't around in Gen 4. Here are a few of the most notable ones:

- Power Split. This is, in most cases, a panacea when it comes to neutering anything that wants to take you down with direct damage moves. There are a few exceptions, like specific Swords Dance leads that can get too scary too quickly, but even they are usually manageable with the right backup. With double switching, you can effectively cut some of the most dangerous sweepers down to a fourth of their usual power (or more if you can manage it again!), making even some +6 'Mons a breeze to deal with. Since it's not considered a stat change, Clear Body doesn't block it, Haze doesn't reset it, Magic Bounce doesn't stop it, and a critical hit won't ignore reductions the same way that something like Charm or Intimidate users occasionally have to deal with, making setup after the fact a much safer affair. It also bypasses accuracy/evasion checks, so Bright Powder or Evasion spam won't bother you much, either. It also handles both Attack and Special Attack via a single move, so you're not struggling as much to fit four moves on your set. The only real impediments are Substitute and switches (and by extension U-Turn/Volt Switch). Pre-HOME, relevant users are few and far between, and nothing else comes close to Shuckle's abysmal base 10 Attack and Special Attack stats. With minimum IVs, that brings it down to 15 in both stats at Level 50 (13 with a negative nature), effectively halving the opponent's attacking stats on each use, though you have to switch in and out to use it again.

- Sticky Web. The benefits of -1 Speed on a majority of Pokémon are significant for all sorts of reasons, and it increases the viability of many setup sweepers. It doesn't work against Flying-types, Levitate users, or Clear Body users, and you should be mindful of Competitive Milotic and Defiant Empoleon, too.

- Knock Off. It had this back in Gen 4, but the increased power can come in handy after a Power Split, and its usefulness has increased for scouting (against Trainers that can use two different leads of the same species) as well as when you know a specific set's item could lead to trouble.

It also gets some solid stat reduction moves in Struggle Bug (-SpAtk), Rock Tomb (-Speed), and Flash (-Accuracy), depending on what your build needs. Endure is an option as insurance to get Custap Berry gets to do its thing, but it's usually not necessary. This thing can get a lot done even without Toxic available to it. As the cherry on top, it's got Sturdy to function as insurance against OHKO users, which are pretty prevalent in this Tower. I'm convinced it's in its own class when it comes to a crippling lead. I've even considered using a low-level Shuckle in order to incentivize the opponent to go for the OHKO instead of setting up against it, snce you generally get two attacks with Custap Berry anyway; maybe something to consider for your own teams.

That said, I'm currently sitting at 50 63 wins with a fairly straightforward strategy using it, so I thought I'd share this build:

Impasse (Shuckle) @ Custap Berry
Bold, Sturdy
0 Atk IV, 0 SpAtk IV
252 HP / 156 Def / 96 SpDef
Power Split
Sticky Web
Knock Off
Rock Tomb

A lot of what it does can be described up top. No real reason for the specific EV spread, and I'm sure it could be improved. The next two Pokémon are relatively simple win conditions aided by the tools available, which are described in the sections of those individual 'Mons. Most fights start with a Power Split, then go into whichever of the two flowcharts seems best suited to handle that Trainer. Knock Off can be valuable if the enemy has a Choice item and you'd rather them not switch out after running out of PP on their one move, but remember that you may have to anticipate resist switches, too. Rock Tomb is here to ease prediction for Suicune and get their lead slow enough for Breloom to Breloom it (again, though, consider resist switches), and it's STAB if you stick around after a Power Split against physical sweepers and will do decent damage in that case. Sturdy allows you to stall out OHKO moves; you can often get away with constant double switching to get them to exhaust uses without having to PP stall their entire set. Custap Berry is sometimes pivotal to getting an extra Power Split or utility tool when it's needed. Getting yourself into Custap range, then switching out can be really nice insurance if you get unlucky or make a misplay with your initial win condition so that Shuckle gets a free move that can bail you out for the last 'Mon to clean up.

Sleepfinite (Breloom) @ Toxic Orb
Jolly, Poison Heal
4 HP / 200 Atk / 52 Def / 252 Speed
Spore
Substitute
Seed Bomb
Rock Tomb

After losing enough times because of poorly-constructed teams that failed to consider Breloom, I figured I should get in on the action myself. With a combination of Sticky Web, Knock Off, and Rock Tomb, you can often get all three enemies at your mercy. You have to look out for a few things: Grass-types are immune to Spore, items and abilities can set you back, and you want the opponent to be slower than you. Thankfully, the only abilities in play are Vital Spirit (just Magmortar-3) and Insomnia (Hypno-2 and Hypno-3). No Early Bird or Overcoat users, in case you were wondering. Clear Body users are immune to Sticky Web, but none of the Clear Body users are faster than Jolly max Speed Breloom (Metagross-7 has a Speed tie, but that's specific to Byron in Rank 7 of Masters Singles). Magic Bounce users (Espeon-2 and Espeon-3) make Spore useless, but if you have Sticky Web and a Substitute up when it comes in, you 2HKO with Seed Bomb. Sound moves go through Substitute, but the threatening ones are few and far between; other than Perish Song shenanigans that aren't hard to play around, there's Bug Buzz (Vespiquen-3 and Yanmega-2) and Boomburst (Exploud-2 and Flygon-3). Also, if you can't afford to miss against Bright Powder/Evasion strats, it's often a sign that Suicune is the way to go for consistency's sake. Once you've scouted for those stipulations, you can get a pretty mindless sweep going. Since you'll have a substitute up after taking something out, it's usually not a problem to have to use Spore twice if their reserve 'Mons are carrying a Lum Berry or Chesto Berry. Quick Claw is obviously carrying some risk, too.

You know the drill: Spore -> Substitute. If they're still asleep, use Rock Tomb if they're Rock weak and Grass-resistant (common for Flying-types) and/or if lowering Speed would be valuable (if they can boost with Dragon Dance or if they were immune to Sticky Web, mostly). Seed Bomb is decently powerful STAB. Nothing is immune to either move (no Sap Sipper users in Masters Tower), and neither of them are contact moves (though with Poison Heal that hardly matters). The 52 Defense EVs are to be able to take a non-crit Head Smash from Rampardos-3 and always have enough HP to create a Substitute afterward. 4 HP is to make it so Breloom gets 25% health back after two turns so it can perpetually Spore -> Sub so long as it has the health to create the first one. As I understand it, Rampardos Head Smash is the only non-crit move that Shuckle just straight-up loses to even with max HP / max Defense (Mold Breaker negates Sturdy), and it is a lead on more than one team, so this felt necessary. Technician would be really nice to boost damage (and replace Seed Bomb with Bullet Seed), but I've had enough close calls with enemies waking up after a single turn six or seven times in a row for the stall potential with Poison Heal to feel more risk-averse and useful. It also allows you to switch in Breloom to save low-health Shuckle for a Custap move later without risking being left without multiple Substitute uses.

Kyle (Suicune) @ Leftovers
Bold, Inner Focus
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Speed
Scald
Ice Beam
Rest
Calm Mind

Simple CMCune. Just sits on a lot of teams until it's ready to sweep. The ideal is getting at least two Power Splits off, then boosting up freely. Sacrifice Breloom to manage it if necessary, but double switching to/from Suicune is perfectly fine after a Power Split in the overwhelming majority of cases. There's honestly not a whole lot to say about it; it's just one of the most reliable setup sweepers around. After a couple of Power Splits, very few things scare you anymore. Ice Beam is to deal with strong Dragons and to have something to hit Water Absorb 'Mons.

 

[Eisenherz]

Quick update on my streak since I reached a new milestone:

This is what the team is currently, and that's definitely going to be the final version until Home, where I'll replace Ice Beam with Hurricane on Kingdra if by some miracle the streak is still ongoing:

@

Modest | Drizzle
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Brine / Hurricane / Tailwind / Protect

@

Modest | Swift Swim
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Scald / Dragon Pulse / Ice Beam / Protect

@

Timid | Inner Focus
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Thunder / Thunderbolt / Volt Switch / Shadow Ball

@

Adamant | Technician
EVs: 76 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 172 Spe
Bullet Punch / X-Scissor / Swords Dance / Protect

The only real change since last time is Volt Switch > Extrasensory on Raikou, thanks to Sirya providing me with one of his TMs.
I wouldn't say it's a minor change, Volt Switch makes a world of difference and opens up my options a lot on how to handle tougher matchups where I have to do a lot of switching, whether it be to change weather or switch back and forth between Raikou and Pelipper as resists to one another, baiting attacks. It also allows coming in on Slowbro-2, for example, get yawned on the switch, and OHKO Slowbro on my way out to not suffer the incoming sleep. While Scald was in my initial plans, every move on Raikou feels too important to give up right now, while Scald would be more of a luxury considering the frontline. Funnily, this makes Raikou end up with the exact same moveset Jolteon was running.

As my previous team reports mention, my hopes for this team weren't too high at first, it was put together pretty quickly, but as the streak kept rolling, I started to feel some pressure to take it more seriously; clearly, the team is pretty good, and I don't want the time I invested in it to just go to waste. I had several close calls and definitely some luck along the way on games I played sloppily, but around 300, I decided this streak was now too good to throw away, and I started putting effort into it.

I started taking notes of what trainer duos gave me trouble, any close calls, etc. and I spent actual hours (probably around 6-8 by now – it's still an ongoing process) purely theorymonning those matchups to find my best plays in advance. It's exhausting, and not particularly enjoyable to me, but the feeling of seeing a very convoluted plan to win regardless of hax actually work out through bad RNG is some of the most satisfying stuff I've experienced in facilities.

I spent a whopping 3.5 hours thinking about Dallin and Barret, which's team looked pretty easy to handle to me at first ("oh, Scizor just wins, let's find a way to SD and that should be it..."). After nearly losing to that team, I sat down and realized setting up a SD safely looked practically impossible. By the end, I ended up with this:

matchplan

...I have yet to face them again, but now I can't wait.

I have now done the same for a lot more matchups, though the vast majority are much shorter because there are a lot less variables that matter. I'm using a spreadsheet that looks like this:

I think in the long run, this will be key to the most successful streaks, not the sheet necessarily, but planning to try and mitigate all the RNG thrown our way. This might also be a little different for singles and doubles; while doubles often has the luxury of more leniency with suboptimal plays/teams because it has more ways to bait and buy free turns, finding the right line in a bad double-matchup tends to be more complex because more variables means there are many more ways it could go wrong, and perfectly safe plans become a lot more difficult to make. I assume planning singles matchups will be a bit more straightforward, but finding the right team for it might be less so.

Oh, by the way, see those numbers on the sheet? They're because of this:

I rematched a LOT of trainers in my run, way more than I think I should have. I'm not convinced all 261 possible Doubles Master trainers (excluding bosses) in SadisticMystic's sheet can actually be drawn from. Given that we didn't know genders were fixed, I wonder if some team compositions aren't available to fight once you reach Master Rank 10.

I had the same feeling after ~200 battles, and JustinTR also mentioned on Discord that he felt the repeats seemed too frequent to be a pool of this size. So I tracked all of my encounters, starting from 103 which is when I started recording (I went back through the VODs for previous ones).

As of now, I have the data from 336 non-boss encounters, and here are the stats:

• 128 unique trainer duos encountered. Unfortunately, I only recently started separating same duos using different teams, so 128 is truly the number of duos and not the number of different teams. Most have only 1, but some have 2 or even 3 possible teams.
• Of those 128, 31 were only encountered once, 36 were encountered twice, 26 were encountered thrice, 20 were encountered 4 times, 7 were were encountered 5 times, 4 were encountered 6 times, and Carlo/Cortney take the palm for being the only ones to challenge me 7 times.

I am no statistician, as a matter of fact I'm embarrassingly bad at math, so I'm not going to draw conclusions from it, I just wanted to share it so people who know what they're talking about can use it if they want.
However, it kind of seems like those numbers make sense?
If they do add up with what we should be getting, then my theory as to why all of us had the impression of getting way more rematches is that there are a lot of similar names (there's an Andreas/Kristi team, and also an Andreas/Kristy team lol), and many of them are part of several duos, so we do see them a lot, with similar Pokémon, so they can start to blend together if you're not keeping track. That makes it so just a couple of genuine repeats can make you go "wow we're really just facing the same teams a lot!".

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I'm still updating the YouTube playlist with the recording of the entire streak as I go, in case someone is curious to see the battles. From memory, the 420-427 leg was the most difficult/unlucky I faced, if any might serve for actual entertainment.

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Anyway, now that I've put many hours into properly figuring out lines of play for this team, I feel more committed, so I'll keep going with the big 1k in sight. I might slow down a bit though, because this is unironically happening now:

 

[TailGlowVM]

This is what the team is currently, and that's definitely going to be the final version until Home, where I'll replace Ice Beam with Hurricane on Kingdra if by some miracle the streak is still ongoing:

In addition to that, have you considered trying Zapdos over Raikou when HOME adds its proper movepool back? You lose some speed but get STAB Hurricane, the option of rain-boosted Weather Ball, an extra Grass resist and a bit more power. Not sure if this is worth it, but just interested.

 

[Eisenherz]

In addition to that, have you considered trying Zapdos over Raikou when HOME adds its proper movepool back? You lose some speed but get STAB Hurricane, the option of rain-boosted Weather Ball, an extra Grass resist and a bit more power. Not sure if this is worth it, but just interested.

As a backliner, one of Raikou's main roles is to be an Electric switch-in, it has to come in on stuff like opposing Raikou Thunders. I think Zapdos couldn't fill that role well enough, and Weather Ball is a bit like Scald on Raikou; unnecessary considering the front line.

Not to say Zapdos doesn't have potential for a rain team, but I don't think it would be the right fit for this team. Zapdos will be particularly interesting for role compression for Pelipper as TW setter and Raikou as Thunder spammer, and it could enable to make a rain team around Politoed instead, with a new Electric resist/immunity.

 

[Twist84]

Normal Single Battle​

Simple Single 105 Victory (Not finish)

Blastoise @ White Herb Ability : Torrent Modest Nature 4 HP / 252 SPA / 252 SPE - Shell Smash - Scald - Ice Beam - Aurasphere	Garchomp @ Yache Berry Ability : Rough Skin Adamant Nature 4 HP / 252 ATK / 252 SPE - Dragon Claw - EarthQuake - Stone Edge - Poison Jab	Scizor @ Leftovers Ability : Technician Adamant Nature 4 HP / 252 ATK / 252 SPE - Sword Dance - Bullet Punch - X-Scissor - Brick Break

There will be little explanation, already send Blastoise first, it is possible to fall on pokémon with the talent Intimidate or those which can learn Petal Dance, at this moment, it is necessary to switch, if not to place a Shell Smash and to analyze the situation.

With Garchomp you can replace Poison Jab with Sword Dance if you want, it saved my life against Gardevoir and did a bit more damage on Azumarill. Stone edge can miss :/

Cizayox has the well known role of battle tower, brick break which breaks the protections of Noctowl and wall lights of other user...

/!\ Shedinja best counter because Garchomp can beat him with Stone Edge /!\

The worst counter is Azumarill which can do a lot of damage, you need Blastoize to burn with Scald and you can win it. Slowking also with Trick Room, Ice Beam, Flamethrower and Scald :l.

Octillery and Glalie with Protect + Moody Ability
Muk with Protect + Minimize.
Weezing with Will-O-Wisp + Double Team.
Munchlax with Fissure
Driftblim with Hypnosis + Dream Eater + Charge Beam
Milotic Hypnosis
Gyarados after 1 Dragon Dance

 

[GG Unit]

I've spent a lot of my Tower time up to this point trying different variations of a lead crippler strategy and wanted to bring one particular 'Mon up because of how much it manages to get done... Shuckle.

It gets an incredible amount of utility options, many of which weren't around in Gen 4. Here are a few of the most notable ones:

- Power Split. This is, in most cases, a panacea when it comes to neutering anything that wants to take you down with direct damage moves. There are a few exceptions, like specific Swords Dance leads that can get too scary too quickly, but even they are usually manageable with the right backup. With double switching, you can effectively cut some of the most dangerous sweepers down to a fourth of their usual power (or more if you can manage it again!), making even some +6 'Mons a breeze to deal with. Since it's not considered a stat change, Clear Body doesn't block it, Haze doesn't reset it, Magic Bounce doesn't stop it, and a critical hit won't ignore reductions the same way that something like Charm or Intimidate users occasionally have to deal with, making setup after the fact a much safer affair. It also bypasses accuracy/evasion checks, so Bright Powder or Evasion spam won't bother you much, either. It also handles both Attack and Special Attack via a single move, so you're not struggling as much to fit four moves on your set. The only real impediments are Substitute and switches (and by extension U-Turn/Volt Switch). Pre-HOME, relevant users are few and far between, and nothing else comes close to Shuckle's abysmal base 10 Attack and Special Attack stats. With minimum IVs, that brings it down to 15 in both stats at Level 50 (13 with a negative nature), effectively halving the opponent's attacking stats on each use, though you have to switch in and out to use it again.

- Sticky Web. The benefits of -1 Speed on a majority of Pokémon are significant for all sorts of reasons, and it increases the viability of many setup sweepers. It doesn't work against Flying-types, Levitate users, or Clear Body users, and you should be mindful of Competitive Milotic and Defiant Empoleon, too.

- Knock Off. It had this back in Gen 4, but the increased power can come in handy after a Power Split, and its usefulness has increased for scouting (against Trainers that can use two different leads of the same species) as well as when you know a specific set's item could lead to trouble.

It also gets some solid stat reduction moves in Struggle Bug (-SpAtk), Rock Tomb (-Speed), and Flash (-Accuracy), depending on what your build needs. Endure is an option as insurance to get Custap Berry gets to do its thing, but it's usually not necessary. This thing can get a lot done even without Toxic available to it. As the cherry on top, it's got Sturdy to function as insurance against OHKO users, which are pretty prevalent in this Tower. I'm convinced it's in its own class when it comes to a crippling lead. I've even considered using a low-level Shuckle in order to incentivize the opponent to go for the OHKO instead of setting up against it, snce you generally get two attacks with Custap Berry anyway; maybe something to consider for your own teams.

View attachment 392570View attachment 392569

That said, I'm currently sitting at 50 63 wins with a fairly straightforward strategy using it, so I thought I'd share this build:

Impasse (Shuckle) @ Custap Berry
Bold, Sturdy
0 Atk IV, 0 SpAtk IV
252 HP / 156 Def / 96 SpDef
Power Split
Sticky Web
Knock Off
Rock Tomb

A lot of what it does can be described up top. No real reason for the specific EV spread, and I'm sure it could be improved. The next two Pokémon are relatively simple win conditions aided by the tools available, which are described in the sections of those individual 'Mons. Most fights start with a Power Split, then go into whichever of the two flowcharts seems best suited to handle that Trainer. Knock Off can be valuable if the enemy has a Choice item and you'd rather them not switch out after running out of PP on their one move, but remember that you may have to anticipate resist switches, too. Rock Tomb is here to ease prediction for Suicune and get their lead slow enough for Breloom to Breloom it (again, though, consider resist switches), and it's STAB if you stick around after a Power Split against physical sweepers and will do decent damage in that case. Sturdy allows you to stall out OHKO moves; you can often get away with constant double switching to get them to exhaust uses without having to PP stall their entire set. Custap Berry is sometimes pivotal to getting an extra Power Split or utility tool when it's needed. Getting yourself into Custap range, then switching out can be really nice insurance if you get unlucky or make a misplay with your initial win condition so that Shuckle gets a free move that can bail you out for the last 'Mon to clean up.

Sleepfinite (Breloom) @ Toxic Orb
Jolly, Poison Heal
4 HP / 200 Atk / 52 Def / 252 Speed
Spore
Substitute
Seed Bomb
Rock Tomb

After losing enough times because of poorly-constructed teams that failed to consider Breloom, I figured I should get in on the action myself. With a combination of Sticky Web, Knock Off, and Rock Tomb, you can often get all three enemies at your mercy. You have to look out for a few things: Grass-types are immune to Spore, items and abilities can set you back, and you want the opponent to be slower than you. Thankfully, the only abilities in play are Vital Spirit (just Magmortar-3) and Insomnia (Hypno-2 and Hypno-3). No Early Bird or Overcoat users, in case you were wondering. Clear Body users are immune to Sticky Web, but none of the Clear Body users are faster than Jolly max Speed Breloom (Metagross-7 has a Speed tie, but that's specific to Byron in Rank 7 of Masters Singles). Magic Bounce users (Espeon-2 and Espeon-3) make Spore useless, but if you have Sticky Web and a Substitute up when it comes in, you 2HKO with Seed Bomb. Sound moves go through Substitute, but the threatening ones are few and far between; other than Perish Song shenanigans that aren't hard to play around, there's Bug Buzz (Vespiquen-3 and Yanmega-2) and Boomburst (Exploud-2 and Flygon-3). Also, if you can't afford to miss against Bright Powder/Evasion strats, it's often a sign that Suicune is the way to go for consistency's sake. Once you've scouted for those stipulations, you can get a pretty mindless sweep going. Since you'll have a substitute up after taking something out, it's usually not a problem to have to use Spore twice if their reserve 'Mons are carrying a Lum Berry or Chesto Berry. Quick Claw is obviously carrying some risk, too.

You know the drill: Spore -> Substitute. If they're still asleep, use Rock Tomb if they're Rock weak and Grass-resistant (common for Flying-types) and/or if lowering Speed would be valuable (if they can boost with Dragon Dance or if they were immune to Sticky Web, mostly). Seed Bomb is decently powerful STAB. Nothing is immune to either move (no Sap Sipper users in Masters Tower), and neither of them are contact moves (though with Poison Heal that hardly matters). The 52 Defense EVs are to be able to take a non-crit Head Smash from Rampardos-3 and always have enough HP to create a Substitute afterward. 4 HP is to make it so Breloom gets 25% health back after two turns so it can perpetually Spore -> Sub so long as it has the health to create the first one. As I understand it, Rampardos Head Smash is the only non-crit move that Shuckle just straight-up loses to even with max HP / max Defense (Mold Breaker negates Sturdy), and it is a lead on more than one team, so this felt necessary. Technician would be really nice to boost damage (and replace Seed Bomb with Bullet Seed), but I've had enough close calls with enemies waking up after a single turn six or seven times in a row for the stall potential with Poison Heal to feel more risk-averse and useful. It also allows you to switch in Breloom to save low-health Shuckle for a Custap move later without risking being left without multiple Substitute uses.

Kyle (Suicune) @ Leftovers
Bold, Inner Focus
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Speed
Scald
Ice Beam
Rest
Sleep Talk

Simple CMCune. Just sits on a lot of teams until it's ready to sweep. The ideal is getting at least two Power Splits off, then boosting up freely. Sacrifice Breloom to manage it if necessary, but double switching to/from Suicune is perfectly fine after a Power Split in the overwhelming majority of cases. There's honestly not a whole lot to say about it; it's just one of the most reliable setup sweepers around. After a couple of Power Splits, very few things scare you anymore. Ice Beam is to deal with strong Dragons and to have something to hit Water Absorb 'Mons.

Since you bring up boosting up freely, I'm wondering if you've considered something like Stored Power Cresselia in Suicune's place. It's got better stats than Suicune (for example, 92 HP/212+Def gives the same physical bulk as Suicune and it inherently has the same speed and 15 more points of Sp. Def at level 50) and hits a lot harder once set up (After 6 CMs Stored Power from a Cresselia with the same physical bulk as Suicune and the rest invested into Special Attack is a guaranteed OHKO on the Figy Berry Metagross). It basically comes down to which specific leads don't actually allow for free boosting and would require Suicune's greater immediate power and/or Scald's side effects.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Since you bring up boosting up freely, I'm wondering if you've considered something like Stored Power Cresselia in Suicune's place. It's got better stats than Suicune (for example, 92 HP/212+Def gives the same physical bulk as Suicune and it inherently has the same speed and 15 more points of Sp. Def at level 50) and hits a lot harder once set up (After 6 CMs Stored Power from a Cresselia with the same physical bulk as Suicune and the rest invested into Special Attack is a guaranteed OHKO on the Figy Berry Metagross). It basically comes down to which specific leads don't actually allow for free boosting and would require Suicune's greater immediate power and/or Scald's side effects.

That makes a lot of sense. I've been using Suicune as strong filler I already had lying around from another team, but Cress makes a lot of sense. Having the 'Mon backing up Breloom not be weak to the Grass-types Breloom can't put to sleep would take some stress off. My primary worry situations generally come from specific Swords Dance users getting away from me. Of the ones that come to mind, Cresselia definitely has the edge in a lot of matchups. There's Blaziken-4 and Blaziken-5, since speed control is nigh impossible and that Close Combat hurts (though Blaziken-4 still has Flare Blitz). Victreebel-2 and Breloom-2 and can be a bit harrowing (though Shuckle stuff has seen me through it so far); Victreebel wouldn't be hitting super-effectively with Power Whip anymore, and Breloom only having Fighting moves would make it harder for it to break through me. It'd also take the edge off of faster Zapdos sets, which avoid Sticky Web and can be hard to neuter. I sometimes have to play for PP stalling against other Calm Mind users, like the occasional Suicune mirror, and having that much raw power with Stored Power would come in handy. Apparently, Cresselia doesn't get Stored Power in BDSP, but SpDef drops from Psychic might be valuable in the same way. Lead Gliscor-2 becomes much more comfortable to play around instead of walking on eggshells due to Guillotine. My main concern would be thinking about what Ghost and Dark attackers it would need to be able to handle, and maybe seeing how it does against Drought and Drizzle, but it seems like a small price to pay overall.

I'm gonna see about grabbing Cress and fitting it in; thanks for the suggestion! I'm at 79 wins with the previous team, but in this moment, making the switch seems quite compelling.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

loool, lost immediately after switching this morning at 81 wins, but it was primarily from misplays against Dragon Tamer Alonso. I didn't keep Shuckle alive to Power Split against Scizor-2, and Scizor in general is a bigger problem without the Steel resist from Suicune. Could've made it work, and I'm gonna retry with Cress to get more data. For the record, Cresselia was 252 HP, 252 Def, Bold with Psychic, Moonblast, Rest and Calm Mind.

 

[Deneb]

Quick update on my streak since I reached a new milestone:

View attachment 392607

This is what the team is currently, and that's definitely going to be the final version until Home, where I'll replace Ice Beam with Hurricane on Kingdra if by some miracle the streak is still ongoing:


The only real change since last time is Volt Switch > Extrasensory on Raikou, thanks to Sirya providing me with one of his TMs.
I wouldn't say it's a minor change, Volt Switch makes a world of difference and opens up my options a lot on how to handle tougher matchups where I have to do a lot of switching, whether it be to change weather or switch back and forth between Raikou and Pelipper as resists to one another, baiting attacks. It also allows coming in on Slowbro-2, for example, get yawned on the switch, and OHKO Slowbro on my way out to not suffer the incoming sleep. While Scald was in my initial plans, every move on Raikou feels too important to give up right now, while Scald would be more of a luxury considering the frontline. Funnily, this makes Raikou end up with the exact same moveset Jolteon was running.

As my previous team reports mention, my hopes for this team weren't too high at first, it was put together pretty quickly, but as the streak kept rolling, I started to feel some pressure to take it more seriously; clearly, the team is pretty good, and I don't want the time I invested in it to just go to waste. I had several close calls and definitely some luck along the way on games I played sloppily, but around 300, I decided this streak was now too good to throw away, and I started putting effort into it.

I started taking notes of what trainer duos gave me trouble, any close calls, etc. and I spent actual hours (probably around 6-8 by now – it's still an ongoing process) purely theorymonning those matchups to find my best plays in advance. It's exhausting, and not particularly enjoyable to me, but the feeling of seeing a very convoluted plan to win regardless of hax actually work out through bad RNG is some of the most satisfying stuff I've experienced in facilities.

I spent a whopping 3.5 hours thinking about Dallin and Barret, which's team looked pretty easy to handle to me at first ("oh, Scizor just wins, let's find a way to SD and that should be it..."). After nearly losing to that team, I sat down and realized setting up a SD safely looked practically impossible. By the end, I ended up with this:

matchplan

View attachment 392609

...I have yet to face them again, but now I can't wait.

I have now done the same for a lot more matchups, though the vast majority are much shorter because there are a lot less variables that matter. I'm using a spreadsheet that looks like this:

View attachment 392611

I think in the long run, this will be key to the most successful streaks, not the sheet necessarily, but planning to try and mitigate all the RNG thrown our way. This might also be a little different for singles and doubles; while doubles often has the luxury of more leniency with suboptimal plays/teams because it has more ways to bait and buy free turns, finding the right line in a bad double-matchup tends to be more complex because more variables means there are many more ways it could go wrong, and perfectly safe plans become a lot more difficult to make. I assume planning singles matchups will be a bit more straightforward, but finding the right team for it might be less so.

Oh, by the way, see those numbers on the sheet? They're because of this:


I had the same feeling after ~200 battles, and JustinTR also mentioned on Discord that he felt the repeats seemed too frequent to be a pool of this size. So I tracked all of my encounters, starting from 103 which is when I started recording (I went back through the VODs for previous ones).

As of now, I have the data from 336 non-boss encounters, and here are the stats:

• 128 unique trainer duos encountered. Unfortunately, I only recently started separating same duos using different teams, so 128 is truly the number of duos and not the number of different teams. Most have only 1, but some have 2 or even 3 possible teams.
• Of those 128, 31 were only encountered once, 36 were encountered twice, 26 were encountered thrice, 20 were encountered 4 times, 7 were were encountered 5 times, 4 were encountered 6 times, and Carlo/Cortney take the palm for being the only ones to challenge me 7 times.

I am no statistician, as a matter of fact I'm embarrassingly bad at math, so I'm not going to draw conclusions from it, I just wanted to share it so people who know what they're talking about can use it if they want.
However, it kind of seems like those numbers make sense?
If they do add up with what we should be getting, then my theory as to why all of us had the impression of getting way more rematches is that there are a lot of similar names (there's an Andreas/Kristi team, and also an Andreas/Kristy team lol), and many of them are part of several duos, so we do see them a lot, with similar Pokémon, so they can start to blend together if you're not keeping track. That makes it so just a couple of genuine repeats can make you go "wow we're really just facing the same teams a lot!".

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I'm still updating the YouTube playlist with the recording of the entire streak as I go, in case someone is curious to see the battles. From memory, the 420-427 leg was the most difficult/unlucky I faced, if any might serve for actual entertainment.

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Anyway, now that I've put many hours into properly figuring out lines of play for this team, I feel more committed, so I'll keep going with the big 1k in sight. I might slow down a bit though, because this is unironically happening now:

View attachment 392627

When looking at rain teams, both Ludicolo and Kabutops come to mind.

An adamant 252 speed EV Kabutops can reach 264 speed in rain (top 6, speed tie with sun pokémon).
A jolly one can get up to 290 speed in rain (speed tie with third place); you could drop your EVs to 204 and get a top speed of 276, which puts you at fourth place in terms of maximum speed.

I'm currently building my own rain team based on yours. Raichu with Lightning Rod is a pokémon I might try out simply because that ability actually draws electric type attacks to it, no matter what the original target was. Their speed is comparable, but the special attack and bulk of Raikou is much greater.

Also beware that the Volt Switch by a timid Choice Specs Raikou is not a guaranteed OHKO against Slowbro-2. It's going to survive 1 out of 8 times.

 

[Eisenherz]

Also beware that the Volt Switch by a timid Choice Specs Raikou is not a guaranteed OHKO against Slowbro-2. It's going to survive 1 out of 8 times.

I'm aware, I had run the calc (252 SpA Choice Specs Raikou Volt Switch vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Slowbro: 200-236 (99 - 116.8%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO), but it's not a very risky roll to go for. Often, Raikou got yawned on the switch, so the likely OHKO while cancelling the yawn is the appeal. I have yet to get the bad roll, but if it happened, I assume Earthquake might be likely, so volt switching out is all the better.

Good luck with your team!

 

[EliaValkyr]

Since you bring up boosting up freely, I'm wondering if you've considered something like Stored Power Cresselia in Suicune's place. It's got better stats than Suicune (for example, 92 HP/212+Def gives the same physical bulk as Suicune and it inherently has the same speed and 15 more points of Sp. Def at level 50) and hits a lot harder once set up (After 6 CMs Stored Power from a Cresselia with the same physical bulk as Suicune and the rest invested into Special Attack is a guaranteed OHKO on the Figy Berry Metagross). It basically comes down to which specific leads don't actually allow for free boosting and would require Suicune's greater immediate power and/or Scald's side effects.

Can Cresselia learn Stored Power in BDSP? According to Serebii, Sword and Shield have that move as a TR but it's not in BDSP so I don't see any way for Cress to learn it. Otherwise I'd probably start using it, as this looks like a great choice.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Impasse (Shuckle) @ Custap Berry
Bold, Sturdy
0 Atk IV, 0 SpAtk IV
252 HP / 156 Def / 96 SpDef
Power Split
Sticky Web
Knock Off
Rock Tomb

A lot of what it does can be described up top. No real reason for the specific EV spread, and I'm sure it could be improved. The next two Pokémon are relatively simple win conditions aided by the tools available, which are described in the sections of those individual 'Mons. Most fights start with a Power Split, then go into whichever of the two flowcharts seems best suited to handle that Trainer. Knock Off can be valuable if the enemy has a Choice item and you'd rather them not switch out after running out of PP on their one move, but remember that you may have to anticipate resist switches, too. Rock Tomb is here to ease prediction for Suicune and get their lead slow enough for Breloom to Breloom it (again, though, consider resist switches), and it's STAB if you stick around after a Power Split against physical sweepers and will do decent damage in that case. Sturdy allows you to stall out OHKO moves; you can often get away with constant double switching to get them to exhaust uses without having to PP stall their entire set. Custap Berry is sometimes pivotal to getting an extra Power Split or utility tool when it's needed. Getting yourself into Custap range, then switching out can be really nice insurance if you get unlucky or make a misplay with your initial win condition so that Shuckle gets a free move that can bail you out for the last 'Mon to clean up.

Sleepfinite (Breloom) @ Toxic Orb
Jolly, Poison Heal
4 HP / 200 Atk / 52 Def / 252 Speed
Spore
Substitute
Seed Bomb
Rock Tomb

After losing enough times because of poorly-constructed teams that failed to consider Breloom, I figured I should get in on the action myself. With a combination of Sticky Web, Knock Off, and Rock Tomb, you can often get all three enemies at your mercy. You have to look out for a few things: Grass-types are immune to Spore, items and abilities can set you back, and you want the opponent to be slower than you. Thankfully, the only abilities in play are Vital Spirit (just Magmortar-3) and Insomnia (Hypno-2 and Hypno-3). No Early Bird or Overcoat users, in case you were wondering. Clear Body users are immune to Sticky Web, but none of the Clear Body users are faster than Jolly max Speed Breloom (Metagross-7 has a Speed tie, but that's specific to Byron in Rank 7 of Masters Singles). Magic Bounce users (Espeon-2 and Espeon-3) make Spore useless, but if you have Sticky Web and a Substitute up when it comes in, you 2HKO with Seed Bomb. Sound moves go through Substitute, but the threatening ones are few and far between; other than Perish Song shenanigans that aren't hard to play around, there's Bug Buzz (Vespiquen-3 and Yanmega-2) and Boomburst (Exploud-2 and Flygon-3). Also, if you can't afford to miss against Bright Powder/Evasion strats, it's often a sign that Suicune is the way to go for consistency's sake. Once you've scouted for those stipulations, you can get a pretty mindless sweep going. Since you'll have a substitute up after taking something out, it's usually not a problem to have to use Spore twice if their reserve 'Mons are carrying a Lum Berry or Chesto Berry. Quick Claw is obviously carrying some risk, too.

You know the drill: Spore -> Substitute. If they're still asleep, use Rock Tomb if they're Rock weak and Grass-resistant (common for Flying-types) and/or if lowering Speed would be valuable (if they can boost with Dragon Dance or if they were immune to Sticky Web, mostly). Seed Bomb is decently powerful STAB. Nothing is immune to either move (no Sap Sipper users in Masters Tower), and neither of them are contact moves (though with Poison Heal that hardly matters). The 52 Defense EVs are to be able to take a non-crit Head Smash from Rampardos-3 and always have enough HP to create a Substitute afterward. 4 HP is to make it so Breloom gets 25% health back after two turns so it can perpetually Spore -> Sub so long as it has the health to create the first one. As I understand it, Rampardos Head Smash is the only non-crit move that Shuckle just straight-up loses to even with max HP / max Defense (Mold Breaker negates Sturdy), and it is a lead on more than one team, so this felt necessary. Technician would be really nice to boost damage (and replace Seed Bomb with Bullet Seed), but I've had enough close calls with enemies waking up after a single turn six or seven times in a row for the stall potential with Poison Heal to feel more risk-averse and useful. It also allows you to switch in Breloom to save low-health Shuckle for a Custap move later without risking being left without multiple Substitute uses.

Kyle (Suicune) @ Leftovers
Bold, Inner Focus
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Speed
Scald
Ice Beam
Rest
Calm Mind

Simple CMCune. Just sits on a lot of teams until it's ready to sweep. The ideal is getting at least two Power Splits off, then boosting up freely. Sacrifice Breloom to manage it if necessary, but double switching to/from Suicune is perfectly fine after a Power Split in the overwhelming majority of cases. There's honestly not a whole lot to say about it; it's just one of the most reliable setup sweepers around. After a couple of Power Splits, very few things scare you anymore. Ice Beam is to deal with strong Dragons and to have something to hit Water Absorb 'Mons.

Ended up dropping Cresselia after a few runs. Got into situations I wasn't crazy about and I think that Suicune is likely more reliable overall. I'm realizing that boosting Steel-types in general are kind of annoying for the team. Swords Dance Scizors are already difficult to hold back with Suicune, and the team's matchup against them with Cress gets even worse, on top of struggling with the non-SD sets at times. Scizor is very common and being able to manage against it consistently feels necessary to manage a long streak. Suicune resisting Steel moves helps more than I initially thought. I've also changed the Suicune set to include Surf over Scald and the EV spread is now 204 HP / 252 Def / 52 SpAtk. The primary purpose is to guarantee that I deal over 75% on Charizard-5 (Sitrus Belly Drum set) for a particular team belonging to Policeman Kenton (Rampardos-3 lead is trouble), but I believe it also turns some 2HKOs into OHKOs and 3HKOs into 2HKOs on various enemies when Suicune is +6, too. I almost never try to fish for Scald burns, and I've had a few situations where the burn caused an enemy to faint before I was able to properly set up / finish Resting, so it feels like the only loss there comes from Hail Mary burn proc when the game's gotten away from me.

I've been thinking about what I can do to improve Breloom's overall matchup spread. Considering a couple new options:

Low Sweep has STAB for decent power and is 100% accurate, so I can guarantee a Speed drop against everyone but Ghost-types, compared to worrying about 95% accurate Rock Tomb from Breloom missing in an important moment. Shuckle's Rock Tomb can be deployed to deal with Ghost leads, and Sticky Web gets all of the ones in reserve except for Drifblim and Mismagius. Only Drifblim-4 outspeeds Breloom, but it's a Minimize -> Baton Pass lead and not really something Breloom deals with anyway (still a chore regardless!). Only Mismagius-2 outspeeds Breloom, but for the two teams it's on, Suicune sweeps easily.

Leech Seed could help deal consistent damage in any matchup Breloom would consider fighting in as long as it hits (which shouldn't be a problem given Spore safety). It would improve some slow-paced matchups where I otherwise deal little to no damage and could even improve certain matchups for Suicune if Breloom can get a move in without dying. It has the benefit of faster PP stalling on a specific move without having to resort to Spore, as well as getting extra turns over time if the opponent takes a turn to heal. Obviously useful against bulkier opponents.

My main concerns here would be the moves being dropped. Seed Bomb allows for the strongest STAB and is convenient against the bulkiest Water-types but seems fairly unimportant so far, at least. Rock Tomb could theoretically be dropped but has weirdly allowed me to win the 1v1 against physically defensive Zapdos for whatever reason; at some point they just neglect to Roost for reasons I don't understand. Could possibly go for Low Sweep / Rock Slide to get a stronger Rock move and as another way of taking advantage of the speed control with flinches, or try Low Sweep / Leech Seed and see if I can wear those same Zapdos sets down with Leech Seed. I'm just scared to fix what doesn't seem quite broken, you know?

 

[ryan_missingno]

Hi :) I am still really new to smogon, but here is my Normal Class Doubles battle tower team. I just got to a streak of 105 so I thought I'd go ahead and post my team for you in case I can make it to 200! Hopefully this is the correct way to post this, and I will admit this isn't like a groundbreaking team or anything lol.

Latios @ Soul Dew Ability: Levitate Hasty Nature 252 SpA /4 SpD / 252 Spe - Thunderbolt - Surf - Psychic - Draco Meteor

Garchomp @ Enigma Berry Ability: Rough Skin Adamant Nature 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Earthquake - Swords Dance - Rock Slide - Dragon Claw

Scizor @ Leftovers Ability:Technician Adamant Nature 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD - Bullet Punch - U-turn - Roost - Swords Dance

Gengar @ Focus Sash Ability: Cursed Body Timid Nature 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Sludge Bomb - Dazzling Gleam - Nasty Plot - Shadow Ball

The strategy is pretty simple:

1. Lead with Latios and Scizor, Scizor Swords Dance while Latios usually Surfs (unless surf is not effective then go for a big Psychic or Draco Meteor). After that Scizor can start either Bullet Punching away or using U-Turn on a Dark type enemy (like Umbreon). If there's a non-bulky water type like Omastar then Latios can usually OHKO with Thunderbolt. If there's a Charizard or Magmortar (can outspeed the Scizor), then I would switch out Scizor INSTEAD of using U-turn. This was a great chance to bait the fire attack and switch in to Garchomp.

2. If Scizor faints or needs to be switched out, Garchomp is great obviously because he can spam earthquake while Latios hits Psychic or Draco Meteor.

3. Gengar is tied for speed with Latios and the focus sash really helps get a Nasty Plot off, after which Gengar can deal some massive damage.

Hopefully this was the right way to do this! Thanks for this thread it's really fun.

 

[EliaValkyr]

Now that I made an account I figured I'd share my team. I haven't played a lot but I got to Rank 8 and my best streak is 35 games in the Master mode (only recently I started using the spreadsheet). Feel free to criticize my team and point out what could be improved!

Latios @ Lum Berry
Timid, Levitate
4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Psychic
- Draco Meteor
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt

My lead. Has pretty good coverage and can hit mostly anything. Also outspeeds pretty much everyone, from my experience. Can also decently tank special moves, though not as good as Suicune. It's pretty versatile and has a very powerful finisher in Draco Meteor that hits many pokemon at least for neutral damage.

Suicune @ Leftovers
Bold, Inner Focus
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Calm Mind
- Rest

Standard Suicune set, does its job very well. I also really like Suicune and I never have had one so I wanted to have a team with it. Many of my games end up with me switching it in on ice or water moves aimed at one of my other mons, setting up and sweeping the entire team. Can 1v1 most enemy tanks (Cress, Milotic, other Suicunes), though I just wish it could have Pressure for better stalling. The IV spread is not optimal (I need to make it a bit faster to outspeed some threats), but is still very reliable.

Blaziken @ Life Orb
Adamant, Speed Boost
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Flare Blitz
- Close Combat
- Earthquake
- Protect

Physical sweeper, does a ton of damage but is very frail and relies on one-shotting everything (and even then sometimes dies to recoil). It's kinda hard to switch to it in battle, but the AI is exploitable (ice moves on Latios, grass moves on Suicune) and when I can get it in for free it does a ton of work, since it mostly outspeeds anything except fast scarfers after a speed boost, and AI scarfers are very easily dealt with. I've thought about replacing some move with Swords Dance and giving it a focus sash but I don't like the unreliability of that strategy, as I'd die to any priority move, entry hazards or sandstorm/hail. So I'm leaving it like this for now. Someone also asked for a Blaziken team some time ago so here you go.

Overall I quite like this team, and since I made it myself I want to push and get to rank 10. Some mons I struggle with are Zapdos as I have no way to reliably kill it, and otherwise unlucky quick claws and bright powders, as I don't have any priority moves nor moves that ignore accuracy.

 

[Twist84]

Normal Double Battle
​

Simple Double Battle : +105 Victory and not finished :)

Garchomp @ Yache Berry Ability : Rough Skin Adamant Nature 4 HP / 252 ATK / 252 SPE - Dragon Claw - EarthQuake - Rock Slide - Poison Jab	Rotom-W @ Leftovers Ability : Levitate Timid Nature 4 HP / 252 S ATK / 252 SPE - Hydro Pump - Thunderbolt - Discharge - Dark Pule	Scizor @ Expert Belt Ability : Technician Adamant Nature 4 HP / 252 ATK / 252 SPE - Protect - Bullet Punch - X-Scissor - Brick Break	Togekiss @ Life Orb Ability : Serene Grace Timid Nature 4 HP / 252 S ATK / 252 SPE - Dazzling Gleam - Air Slash - Aurasphere - *Tri Attack

I had some hard choices on which pokémon will hold which items... the simple duo fights are very easy why?

- Palmer never shows up so neither on the 21st / 49th / 70th / 98th and beyond...
- There is no legendary pokémon that will show up, it's only in rank fights

the beginning is quite simple we place Garchomp and Rotom Wash a very nasty duo why ?

- Garchomp is not afraid of Rotom-Wash's Discharge
- Rotom Wash has levitate so doesn't fear Garchomp's Earthquake attack
- The Discharge/EarthQuake combo works well
- The Discharge/Rock Slide combo is a haxx because Discharge has a chance to paralyze the 2 opposing pokémon and Rock Slide to scare off what was abused ^^
- The Dark Pulse/Rock Slide fight can scare

the other pokémon behind are for the synergy Dragon / Steel / Fairy and RotomW for the synergy RotomW + Scizor.

- Garchomp: a pretty basic set, Dragon claw + Earthquake for STAB, Rock Slide for attacking 2 pokémon and Poison Jab for poisoning chances but very little useful

- RotomWash : very few offensive moves so we keep the STAB Hydro-Pump + Thunderbolt, Discharge for the duo and Dark Pulse is quite interesting for the duo to manage Jynx/Frosslass for example

- Scizor : Bullet Punch STAB + X-Scissors as usual, Brick Break as move combat and to eliminate Reflect/LightScreen and Abri in case my Garchomp uses Earthquake or my Rotom Wash with Discharges

- Togekiss : the STAB Dazzling Gleam + Air Slash as usual, Aurasphere to target a lot of pokémon. Lastly, due to lack of ideas, *I put Tri Attack but it was completely useless, I can advise Protect/Roost/Life Dew/Psychic/Flamethrower instead, which will do the job a bit better I think.

I don't really have any particular counter except Crobat/Gengar which do a lot of damage, knowing that since the 6G the steel types don't resist to Spectre/Tenber attacks anymore :sad:

 

[TailGlowVM]

Normal Double Battle
​

Simple Double Battle : +105 Victory and not finished :)

- Togekiss : the STAB Dazzling Gleam + Air Slash as usual, Aurasphere to target a lot of pokémon. Lastly, due to lack of ideas, *I put Tri Attack but it was completely useless, I can advise Protect/Roost/Life Dew/Psychic/Flamethrower instead, which will do the job a bit better I think.

I don't really have any particular counter except Crobat/Gengar which do a lot of damage, knowing that since the 6G the steel types don't resist to Spectre/Tenber attacks anymore :sad:

Protect on Togekiss would definitely help with Crobat and Gengar, since I'm pretty sure the AI still likes using supereffective moves when it can KO, and most of the time either you'll have a Pokemon alongside that isn't weak to any of their moves or they simply are running a set that doesn't carry any supereffective ones against the rest of the team. Some of the Crobat sets are Choice-locked also, and Protect would let you scout the move they're going to pick.

 

[Twist84]

Protect on Togekiss would definitely help with Crobat and Gengar, since I'm pretty sure the AI still likes using supereffective moves when it can KO, and most of the time either you'll have a Pokemon alongside that isn't weak to any of their moves or they simply are running a set that doesn't carry any supereffective ones against the rest of the team. Some of the Crobat sets are Choice-locked also, and Protect would let you scout the move they're going to pick.

Crobat has always Brave Bird, U-Turn, Poison Cross and Gengar had Focus Sash SludBomb Shadow Ball Destiny Bond. I enjoy having the tower pokemon guide even though I rarely look at it

 

[Willow Mango]

I somehow ended up getting this weird Dusclops and Fling Tyranitar to 200 consecutive wins. I started drafting a Masters Doubles team during my semester at university, and the idea was to have it be Dusknoir/Aron/Machamp/Tyranitar, similar to DaWoblefet's team. However, I was unable to trade with anyone since I didn't have Nintendo Switch Online and everyone was too busy with finals to trade with me locally. So for a brief period of time, I ended up using a team of Dusclops/Aron/Machoke/Tyranitar and got a streak of 41, during which I ended up realizing that this Dusclops might actually be more useful to me than a Dusknoir. So, once I was able to trade, I evolved only the Machoke and started a streak and see where it went.

Giygas (M) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 148 Def / 108 SpD
Relaxed
IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/0
- Trick Room
- Night Shade
- Brick Break
- Gravity

The reason I ended up keeping this guy as a Dusclops is because it underspeeds a Tyranitar holding Iron Ball. During my streak of 41, there were a couple of times where getting a Gravity off before having Tyranitar use Fling or Stone Edge would guarantee the win right then and there, as opposed to a possible miss via bad accuracy or Bright Powder. A Dusknoir with the same spread and nature would end up being faster than Tyranitar, and thus wouldn't be able to move before it for the fun combos. The spread I used was from DaWoblefet's post, designed for Dusknoir to survive a Shadow Ball from Gengar-4 100% of the time. I didn't end up changing it since I figured I would eventually evolve it, but I never did and thankfully the situation never happened.

Wheatley (F) @ Berry Juice
Ability: Sturdy
Level: 1
Naughty
- Endeavor
- Iron Head
- Screech
- Protect

I think there are better move choices for this little guy, namely in replacement for Iron Head and Screech. I think Iron Head could be replaced with Aerial Ace, which may come in handy for killing a 1 HP opponent who has some evasiveness. I think Screech could be replaced with any other move. I chose Screech as a way to allow either of the backup mons to get a kill on a ghost type, but I never ended up using it. I was also considering using Screech + Shadow Punch to kill ghost types, but I ended up deciding the 85% accuracy wasn't worth risking.

András Arató (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: No Guard
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/0
- Dynamic Punch
- Knock Off
- Ice Punch
- Bullet Punch

This is the exact Machamp from DaWoblefet's and Eppie's posts, and I love it a lot. I ended up being able to OHKO a good number of Bright Powder holders with her, without having to worry about the 10% miss.

LNG Doinb (M) @ Iron Ball
Ability: Sand Stream
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/0
- Fling
- Assurance
- Stone Edge
- Stomping Tantrum

Here's the strangest member of the team. In hindsight, this set is really unnecessary. Going into the tower, I thought that having flexibility with speed and a 130 base power dark type move would be useful, but I don't believe they've contributed to the battle in any meaningful way. I thought the extra damage would OHKO a Cresselia or something of the sort, but as a matter of fact, a Fling from this Tyranitar doesn't OHKO any of the potential Cresselia. I think having Crunch and either BlackGlasses/Dread Plate or Chople Berry would work just as well, and you then would be able to run the bulkier Dusknoir to set up Trick Room, and still be able to do the spicy Gravity + Stone Edge or Night Shade + Assurance combos.

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The typical game plan for this team is Trick Room + Protect turn 1, remove both Pokemon on one trainer's side, then 2v1 the other two. Whenever possible, I chose to eliminate the side which Dusclops + Aron could guaranteed defeat in 2 turns, (i.e. the side with no ghost types or healing berries/evasion items). In a lot of matches, both sides were equally killable, so I prioritized eliminating the side which did more damage to Dusclops, or had more potential to apply statuses to Aron.

Around 50% of the matches were played with just Dusclops and Aron. These matches would usually end up being 5 turns long, with each opposing Pokemon dying to Endeavor + Night Shade/Brick Break. Against Pokemon with evasion boosts, matches usually ended up being longer, since I typically took an additional turn to use Gravity + Protect on the 4th turn and Trick Room + Protect on the 6th turn. Sometimes Dusclops would die before turn 4, in which case Machamp would be switched in and hit the evasion boosted Pokemon guaranteed. Against ghost types, the hope was to have Dusclops get Trick Room up and then die, so that Tyranitar could come in and hit the Ghost type later. This usually never happened, since the opposing ghost types were too focused on hitting my Aron for some reason, so once one side was completely gone, I would switch Aron out for Tyranitar.

The biggest threats to this team were:
- Abomasnow lead teams: Ellis & Irene is one of the scariest. In my experience, Bronzong-3 always targets the Aron slot with Body Press, so I can't immediately switch it into Tyranitar, but if I don't, Aron ends up taking chip damage at the end of the turn. This was the team that ended my very first streak, since I was somehow under the assumption that Bronzong would set up the Trick Room for me turn 1.
- Teams with flinch moves: Any team which can flinch Dusclops and cause Aron to be protectless on turn 2 can really require me to get creative. Kelton & Anissa is a super fun example. Leafeon-2 has Bite and Heatran-5 has Dark Pulse, and both have a chance to target Dusclops with those moves turn 1. Barry's Empoleon sometimes targets Dusclops with Waterfall, which has flinched me twice in a row before. Kangaskhan-2 is also sometimes troublesome, as it will typically Fake Out the Dusclops with Scrappy.
- Teams with Sheer Cold leads: I say Sheer Cold specifically since Horn Drill and Guillotine both can't hit Dusclops, and teams with Fissure really love to use it on Aron for some reason. If Dusclops dies before getting a Trick Room off, Aron loses most if its value, and Machamp is outsped by the OHKO user. I have yet to have a Sheer Cold land on my Dusclops yet, though it has been targeted by it once or twice.

I'm not sure how much farther I can take this team, as the spreads for all of these Pokemon are unoptimized for the tower. I have done zero calcs for EVs so there are definitely improvements to be made to allow any of these Pokemon to live more often while still OHKOing.

All in all, it has been a fun experience and I'm very grateful for all of the available resources for the tower, I definitely would not have made it this far without them!

 

[GG Unit]

I’ve got an active streak of 70 (unofficially 101 straight battles without a loss because I lost a streak of 31 when the game froze) with a new Drapion team, featuring Drapion as you’ve never seen it before.

Drapion @ Focus Sash
Jolly
Battle Armor
252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
- Knock Off
- Scary Face
- Whirlwind
- Sand-Attack

I forget whether this is this only thing with access to Knock Off and Scary Face at the moment or if there are others who are just super slow. Drapion’s got a surprisingly good speed tier with a lot of base ~100 opponents running neutral natures and could probably even stand to drop a few points. A lot of the time Focus Sash is useless since the only things one-shotting Drapion are Ground moves or OHKO moves that its teammates can switch into, but it comes into play in some matchups where it switches out turn 1 and is later able to come in and get off at least one crippling move against a set-up sweeper like Dragonite.

This would be an even more amazing crippler if the AI were to not make the occasional galaxy-brained play of switching in Levitate users (but not Flying types, and either way they’re not actually immune just as Ghost types aren’t immune to something like Flash or Glare) after a Sand Attack, and there are other matchups where it’s best to just spam Scary Face rather than try getting too greedy with accuracy reduction and running the lead out of PP for setting up. Whirlwind is rarely used; obviously it depends on the particular team where both backups might be much safer to set up against, but Scizor and Blaziken are some of its more frequent targets (there was one time I Whirlwinded myself out against an Espeon in order to get a free switch-in, that was pretty funny).

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Jolly
Poison Heal
212 HP / 4 Atk / 4 Def / 68 SpD / 220 Spe
- Substitute
- Protect
- Bulldoze
- Double Team

Gliscor can come in on lots of Ground or STAB Electric moves and start its PP stalling thing while keeping Drapion’s Sash intact. The EV spread outspeeds Jolly Lucario by a point, gets the 177 HP benchmark for Poison Heal, and the rest goes into Special Defense until the end where it would take 8 more EVs to go up another point. The moveset goes all in on PP stalling; Fling wouldn’t help against Lum Dragonite, SD Scizor, or Rest Gyarados anyways.

Maybe there’s a better move than Double Team, but I’m quite convinced that Bulldoze is a superior choice to Earthquake. It’s not like you use Gliscor for huge amounts of burst damage, so twice the PP to do 60% as much damage per hit is already coming out ahead in damage output before even factoring in the speed drop or the larger number of opponents you can stall. And how glorious that speed drop is - maybe a perfect example is Raikou, where Bulldoze is a guaranteed 2HKO and therefore a pseudo OHKO while with Earthquake you’re just hoping for a crit to get the OHKO (max 98%).

Glalie @ Leftovers
Timid
Moody
172 HP / 86 SpA / 252 Spe
- Substitute
- Protect
- Disable
- Freeze-Dry

Between Speed and possible accuracy drops and the amount of free turns you can buy for yourself by Disabling the move the opponent used the turn before, Glalie is still able to set up on plenty of opponents even without Truant. Only in this Battle Tower are you going to hear about the defensive utility of an Ice type, but with all the Sheer Colds (the AI still stays in and tries it on you) thrown around and the Ice attacks Gliscor baits, it does actually come in handy! For my money, it’s got to be the best option in the game for not only defeating CM Suicunes but boosting itself for a potential sweep in the process.

I have been quite pleasantly surprised by Freeze-Dry and Disable; with Moody no longer boosting accuracy Frost Breath was off the table for me, but without it I’ve still felt secure in Calm Mind wars (it’s just something like Quiver Dance Volcarona that necessitates Taunt/Frost Breath in past gens). Even against super bulky stuff like Cresselia or Blissey that you’re not really damaging after they get a few CMs, once you get a Sub up through either a miss, them using a non-damaging move (which can be facilitated by Drapion using Knock Off a time or two), tanking the hit through defensive boosts, or Disabling their strongest attack. From there you can either waste their PP and ultimately force a switch (this tends to happen if something’s only remaining damaging move is Disabled, but as with Choice users that run out of PP, they occasionally stay in one more turn) or start throwing out Freeze-Drys, which worst-case will buy you more turns where they’re recovering rather than attacking (I mean actual worst-case is they switch in a resist, so obviously don't do that if that's a possibility), and best-case clinches your victory sooner with a crit or freeze.

Disable is so great at turning things like Choice users from threats into liabilities. Ruin Maniac Titus (I’m sure the localization team is very proud they were able to get his porno-ass “oh yeah, I felt your finishing shot” dialogue into the game) can be a threat to lots of set-up based teams with his kamikaze Rampardos, but I can simply spam Scary Face until Drapion faints, Sub/Protect stall until only 1 Head Smash remains or Glalie gets an intact Sub, and Disable it to not only get a free Sub (or a free hit on the switch-in if Glalie is already behind a Sub) but to force Rampardos to repeat the process and come in for an attempted revenge kill that can be thwarted by using Protect. Sailor Cain is another good example where once Glalie is behind a Sub and has good Special Attack and Defense boosts, it can force out his mono-attacking Blissey and get a free hit on the incoming Scizor. From there Glalie is at a huge advantage because even if Scizor breaks the Sub with Bullet Punch its first turn out, the 2nd Freeze-Dry will have done enough to make it extremely likely to attempt to Roost rather than go for another BP.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

I've been able to get to Rank 10 in Master Doubles using this:

(M) @

, Relaxed, Pressure | **Crowe**
EVs: 252/0/148/0/108/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/0
Trick Room | Night Shade | Brick Break | Gravity

(F) @

, Bashful, Own Tempo | **Lucky**
Level 1 Stats: 12/5/6/5/6/6
Endeavor | Spiky Shield | Destiny Bond | Fake Out

(F) @

, Serious (minted to Brave), Sand Stream | **Kaiju**
EVs: 252/252/4/0/0/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/HT/31/0
Rock Slide | Crunch | Stomping Tantrum | Protect

(M) @

, Brave, No Guard | **no nickname yet**
EVs: 252/252/0/0/4/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/0
Dynamic Punch | Knock Off | Stone Edge | Poison Jab

Figuring out this team took a bit of figuring out the optimal set of four Pokemon and the optimal strategy (I tried a lot of Tyranitar sets, including a mixed one, which explains why the Special Attack IV is bottle capped), and a lot of ended streaks to make me learn stuff the hard way, but I eventually landed on this. I think Smeargle is still the optimal Endeavor user over Aron for a few reasons:

• Own Tempo means it cannot be confused, which helps to minimize hax
• Fake Out allows Smeargle to immobilize problematic leads, including OHKO move users, Absol-3 and Absol-4, Drapion-3, and Torkoal, a la Togedemaru from USUM Battle Tree; this is very important due to the lack of Eviolite in this game, making it easier to OHKO the Trick Room setter
• Destiny Bond enables Smeargle to potentially take out an opposing Pokemon while Dusknoir sets up Gravity
• Spiky Shield breaks Focus Sashes and Sturdy
• Aron does not have access to Toxic at the moment (though, admittedly, this disadvantage goes away once this game can connect to Pokemon Home)

Gravity is absolutely essential in order to make up for the loss of Foresight; in addition to negating two Double Teams, it also makes sure Rock Slide lands, which is a neat bonus. No Guard on Machamp helps against that as well, though having the opponent's attacks always hit you as well is a huge disadvantage, though Machamp can at least induce some hax of its own due to Dynamic Punch's confusion.

Tyranitar ended up being selected as this team was way too weak against Torkoal otherwise. It went through a lot of changes and a lot of trial and error, but I ended up settling on a pure physical set with Dread Plate in order to 2HKO Cresselia, excluding Palmer's Cresselia due to it having Sitrus Berry. (side note: Black Glasses is still the more rad Dark-boosting item, but Dread Plate is what I had on hand). Testing for Machamp and discussion in the Tree Discord revealed just how much of a discount Conkeldurr it is; without Life Orb, it doesn't have even a chance of OHKOing Walrein with Dynamic Punch and, even with it, it's still only 25% (inflicting confusion helps, though). I landed on these four moves for Machamp based around what I needed it to cover, with Stone Edge covering the Kanto birds and Poison Jab helping to make its Fairy matchup not completely hopeless.

Threats to this team are any lead that can OHKO Dusknoir (as mentioned before, OHKO move users and the crit-happy Dark-type sets) and Torkoal due to how much damage Eruption does to just everything. The solution here if they lead is to use Fake Out on them and then set up Trick Room; in the case of the Pokemon that can OHKO Dusknoir, they're not anywhere near as threatening if Trick Room is up. In the case of Torkoal, the play afterwards is to switch Dusknoir for Tyranitar while going for Destiny Bond with Smeargle (whose Sash has most likely been broken due to using Fake Out on turn one). Ghost leads are also problematic and the play against those is to basically just leave them alone until you get a 2v1 situation, which Tyranitar should be able to take care of easily. Intimidate can also be annoying due to this team having two physical attackers in the back.

Other notes:

• Frisk is definitely the optimal ability on Dusknoir; Pressure is completely nonessential to the team's strategy and Frisk can help with figuring out what items the enemy has (i.e. Frisk will help you figure out which Pokemon you should avoid targeting)
• Unnerve could be worth consideration on Tyranitar to avoid breaking Smeargle's own Sash, but not getting the Special Defense boost (and not removing Torkoal's sun) is pretty crappy

Made it to 146 wins; pasting this here for team updates:

(M) @

, Relaxed, Frisk | **Crowe**
EVs: 252/0/148/0/108/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/0
Trick Room | Night Shade | Brick Break | Gravity

(F) @

, Bashful, Own Tempo | **Lucky**
Level 1 Stats: 12/5/6/5/6/6
Endeavor | Spiky Shield | Spore* | Fake Out

(M) @

, Quiet (minted to Brave), Sand Stream | **Gojira**
EVs: 252/252/4/0/0/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/0
Rock Slide | Crunch | Assurance | Protect

(M) @

, Impish (minted to Brave), No Guard | **Arnold**
EVs: 252/252/0/0/4/0 | IVs: 31/31/31/xx/31/0
Dynamic Punch | Knock Off | Ice Punch | Bullet Punch

(* - Smeargle filler move varies; I discuss more later)

Loss was to Barry/Palmer with Empoleon/Rhyperior lead. I could have played it better as the game losing mistake was Endeavor + Night Shading into Empoleon a turn after it protected and I hadn't taken into account the fact that Heatran also had Protect. Whatever, lesson learned for whenever I get around to doing Tower again.

I made changes based on feedback from DaWoblefet as he was using something similar to this. Assurance is very strong on Tyranitar, especially with Black Glasses Dread Plate; in particuar, Night Shade into Assurance has a 93.8% chance to KO Cresselia, while Knock Off into Assurance always does (though for that specific one, it probably still gets it without Dread Plate). First situation is important for Barry/Palmer with Dragonite/Heracross lead, while Knock Off into Assurance is a key part of the strategy against Lionel/Abbey (for the lurkers: Torkoal/Bellossom lead, a particular issue for Trick Room teams). Chople Berry is also good for the random Brick Breaks and Focus Blasts that show up; though from my experience, Tyranitar lived most of the non-STAB ones anyway and, for anything that does get STAB on Fighting-type moves, I don't think Chople Berry is going to save it anyway.

I used three different filler moves on Smeargle for this streak; Destiny Bond for the first few battles (and several other unreported streaks), Haze for the bulk of this run until battle 112, and Spore for the home stretch.

• Destiny Bond is helpful in quite a few scenarios; for example, something behind a Substitute + a Bright Powder or Double Team, a Double Team user next to a Bright Powder user (there's a particularly annoying one that leads Ludicolo and Zapdos; I can't recall the trainer names right now, though), a Ghost-type next to a Double Team or Bright Powder user, just to name a few scenarios where going for Endeavor is either not possible or could have catastrophic consequences. In these situations, the idea is to at least take down something before Smeargle goes down. The downside is that the AI needs to do exactly what you think it's going to do; if it doesn't, tough luck.
• Haze pretty consistently handles situtations where you have something setting up Double Team against you while you take care of the other side, but that's basically it. I think for the whole stretch I was using Haze, I picked it only once. Probably a better move to consider if you're not using Machamp.
• Spore seems good on paper, and I probably need a larger sample size to really get a feel for how effective of a filler move it is. Its most helpful outing was against Ampharos, where I opted to put it to sleep rather than risk Static, but even then, the battle probably would have turned out the same regardless. In theory, it would be most useful so Smeargle can do something around Ghost-types, but you can usually just Endeavor + Night Shade into the other side and then have Tyranitar take care of the Ghost-type once Smeargle faints.

Another idea that I didn't get to test this time was Helping Hand. It would mainly be used for when you have Smeargle alongside either Machamp or Tyranitar, but even then, you're probably better off double targeting with Endeavor. Perhaps Parting Shot could be worth testing as well? (surprisingly, Parting Shot is in this game and Chatot learns it. #TheMoreYouKnow)

A few problematic leads and how to deal with them:

• Torkoal/Bellossom: Fake Out Torkoal on the first turn while setting up Trick Room; once Trick Room is up, switch Dusknoir for Tyranitar, then Endeavor into Torkoal. Ideally, what happens is that Bellossom Solar Beams into Smeargle on the first turn, which means that on the next turn, Torkoal goes down to 1 HP from Endeavor, which means Sand chip will take it out; meanwhile, if Bellossom goes for Solar Beam again, removing its Sun makes it dead weight for that turn.
• Any OHKO move lead: Fake Out against the OHKO move user. Worst case scenario is Walrein-2 or 3 dodging Fake Out and targeting Dusknoir with an OHKO move and landing it. That's a 1.5% chance of that scenario playing out, though, which is not low by Battle Tower standards, but certainly better than the 15% chance if you don't Fake Out. (note: I'm assuming it's a 50/50 on whether Walrein targets Dusknoir or Smeargle, which is probably not the case, but we'll go with it for now).
• Flinching moves: Primarily a concern in the cases of Bite, Dark Pulse, and STAB Rock Slide. I typically just play it safe and Fake Out anything that has moves that can flinch, because Dusknoir getting flinched can make the strategy that much harder.

A random aside to close out this post: I never once during this streak saw the 6.2% chance of Night Shade into Assurance not getting the KO on Cresselia, nor did I ever see Focus Band activate. Guess I know what to expect next time I play the Tower!

 

[4BiddeN]

Got a streak in masters doubles of 123 wins by using the team and and information Q8altaria provided in his post. I didn't have any prior experience in the tower going into this and this team allowed me to familiarize myself with the tower while also having a fun time. So, I'd like to dedicate this streak to altaria, who made this possible in the first place. Thank you!
The loss was against the torkoal and bellosom lead, which ko'ed dusknoir in the first turn before it could use trick room.

 

[Antair]

Struggling a little bit with beating the "easy" version of the tower. I got upto 48 matches with this team but then lost out to the Tycoon's Cresselia in the 49th battle.

I'm feeling I want to replace Starmie but not sure what with. Ideally with something that I can breed fairly easy (so not huge egg move chains, if possible).

Any help would be appreciated!

Team

Dragonite does a fair bit of lifting and can take out anywhere from one or two mon's on it's own. Mamoswine comes in second usually to clean up. But not sure if Starmie is pulling enough weight.

 

[Twist84]

Struggling a little bit with beating the "easy" version of the tower. I got upto 48 matches with this team but then lost out to the Tycoon's Cresselia in the 49th battle.

I'm feeling I want to replace Starmie but not sure what with. Ideally with something that I can breed fairly easy (so not huge egg move chains, if possible).

Any help would be appreciated!

Team

Dragonite does a fair bit of lifting and can take out anywhere from one or two mon's on it's own. Mamoswine comes in second usually to clean up. But not sure if Starmie is pulling enough weight.

Rotom-Wash maybe
you can be before the 42-49 victory streak change the moves of your pokemon at this time.

Example: Starmie Flash / Psych Up / Double Team / Recover against Cresselia (one or two of these moves not the 4 ^^) I don't think that rapid spin is really useful to you, I understand that it is to increase the speed or protected Dragonite.

Otherwise, as I did above, I will be part of a Dragon / Steel synergy, see Dragon / Steel / Fairy

 

[philosobyte]

Physical sweeper, does a ton of damage but is very frail and relies on one-shotting everything (and even then sometimes dies to recoil). It's kinda hard to switch to it in battle, but the AI is exploitable (ice moves on Latios, grass moves on Suicune) and when I can get it in for free it does a ton of work, since it mostly outspeeds anything except fast scarfers after a speed boost, and AI scarfers are very easily dealt with. I've thought about replacing some move with Swords Dance and giving it a focus sash but I don't like the unreliability of that strategy, as I'd die to any priority move, entry hazards or sandstorm/hail. So I'm leaving it like this for now. Someone also asked for a Blaziken team some time ago so here you go.

Finally someone who's used Blaziken. I've been wondering why no one has posted a Blaziken team yet. I have Magnezone on my team for any Zapdos that doesn't know Heat Wave. Magnezone usually resists all of Zapdos's moves, while Zapdos doesn't resist Electric. Against Heat Wave Zapdos, Blaziken is fine, since Heat Wave Zapdos doesn't know any Flying type moves. I think I usually switch to Latios anyway.

I never got a winstreak above 20 because I kept making avoidable mistakes like forgetting about Mold Breaker and forgetting to use Protect to get Speed Boost against mons that outspeed base Blaziken, like Aerodactyl. But I did get to Masters Rank 10 and beat Palmer; I'm confident someone more experienced and patient than I am could get a good streak going with this team:

Blaziken @ Life Orb
Adamant Nature
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Flare Blitz
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Protect

A Blaziken lead guarantees Blaziken can prevent Breloom and Scizor from setting up. Blaziken also trades with CM Suicune and Cresselia to prevent them from sweeping. This is possible by virtue of Blaziken surviving a single super-effective hit from either of them; a single Swords Dance is enough to get either down to 10% so that they can be cleaned up without getting a chance to recover health.

After a speed boost, Blaziken outspeeds almost everything except Aerodactyl and certain Choice Scarf users. Luckily, Blaziken has few enough weaknesses that you can almost always switch in to a pokemon that resists, e.g. Magnezone for flying-type moves or Latios for Ground/Water-type moves.

Life Orb allows Blaziken to OHKO almost anything that is weak to Fighting or Fire, which notably includes Bug, Ice, and Dark types which would give Latios trouble. Even without weaknesses to Blaziken, pokemon who are frail and fast can often still get OHKO'ed. Focus Sash users are the bane of Blaziken's existence, especially Mamoswine. Luckily, Latios is fast enough to allow for trades most of the time, and if not, then Magnezone is guaranteed to live a hit due to Sturdy and then outspeed the next pokemon with Custap berry.

Magnezone @ Custap Berry
Modest Nature
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Thunderbolt
- Flash Cannon
- Volt Switch
- Endure

Classic Custap Berry Magnezone and its eleven resistances comes in handy plenty of times. Magnezone acts as a switch-in against Flying and Water types who give Blaziken trouble or Fairy types who give both Blaziken and Latios trouble, especially Togekiss. Sturdy is indispensable against Fissure/Sheer Cold users. Every ten to twenty matches, Magnezone clutches it out as the last pokemon standing with 1HP. Other steel types like Heatran and Metagross can give Magnezone trouble, but usually Blaziken takes care of them first.

Latios @ Choice Specs
Timid Nature
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Dragon Pulse
- Psychic
- Energy Ball
- Draco Meteor

Choice Specs Latios is the catch-all who can drop a draco to OHKO the ones who Blaziken and Magnezone don't have an answer for. This often turns out to be Dragon types or other miscellaneous bulky pokemon who know Ground moves. Swampert and Gastrodon in particular can't be touched by either Blaziken or Magnezone, but Latios switches in to Earthquake/Earth Power for free and takes advantage of their 4x Grass weakness with Energy Ball. One thing to keep in mind with this team is that if you switch in Latios against a Choice user who uses Earthquake, the AI will almost always switch out. More often than not, they will attempt to switch to a Water-type pokemon who knows an Ice type move. The correct action here is to predict the switch and lock into Energy Ball. Hopefully, when the Choice user is sent back out, you can switch Latios out to reset Latios's move choice.

In earlier iterations of this team, I had Magnezone leading. I had trouble switching Blaziken in as well. Mons like Breloom for whom I need Blaziken the most also happen to be mons who I can't afford allowing a free turn to set up. That's why I decided to try out Blaziken in the lead, and it has worked out pretty well. Switching out pokemon with this team is usually not a problem; the only weakness this team has which is not covered by another mon's resistance is Latios's weakness to Ghost.

Edit: added more detailed set explanation

 

[Legend of Kage]

Adding my Sun Room Team for doubles here. This team has so far gotten me to a 100 win streak fairly easily. Some battles were close but some were like that due to fatuige of doing so many battles in a row. Just a disclaimer, I am on v1.1.1 simply for menu storage to dupe items to not spend as much time training and putting together teams. I know I won't be able to submit a streak on that version but that makes no difference to me. I'm also new to explaining teams so let me know if anything needs clarifying.

The Team
The goal here is to lead Venusaur and Torkal which has some great offensive coverage and instant speed control with Sun. We then have a Cresselia in the back to set up trick room if needed for a Torkoal endgame and a Garchomp to have great offensive pressure with Choice Band. I've used Sun Room teams plenty in VGC so it was a solid choice for me to start with here.

Venusaur @ Focus Sash
Ability: Chlorophyll
Level: 50
EVs: 44 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 204 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Protect
- Solar Beam/Sleep Powder
- Sludge Bomb
- Energy Ball

Our speedy boi when basking in the sun. I started off with Sleep Powder but changed it to Solar beam for some extra power if needed. Sleep Powder's accuracy can hurt in the long run if going for a long streak. When home releases I plan on giving this slot to Earth Power for more coverage. 204 speed EVs allow us to out speed everything while in the sun even choice scarf users. Sash allows us to take a hit if needed and has been incredibly useful here. Then Protect is just because its great to have the option and there are leads that I protect Venusaur and get a free Eruption off because they wanted to double into Venusuar.

Torkoal @ Charcoal
Ability: Drought
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
IV: 24-29
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Protect
- Eruption
- Heat Wave
- Solar Beam

Our bringer of the Drought. The main advantage of Torkoal over Ninetales for a Drought user is speed. Because we are extremely slow, we always can have sun up over other weather setters such as Tyranitar or Politoad. This means we can always start Venusaur off first and fire off powerful Eruptions and Heat Waves if they do not change it on us. Charcoal is just to have a boost to our Fire moves. The speed IVs are interesting here. I did not want to sacrfice bulk for this but there is a Torkoal Bellosom lead that has a similar game plan to us. Venusaur can take care of Bellosom but the Torkoal has 36 speed and usually uses Eruption. So I want mine to outspeed it to knock its health down and lessen the blow on my Torkoal. But I also do not want to speed tie a Rhyperior at 40 speed so I need a semi specific IV to do that. Its not too important but is an optimization I am going for in the future. Solar beam is just for coverage and Protect again is too good in Doubles.

Cresselia @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Trick Room
- Moonlight
- Ice Beam

Cresselia was a pick mainly for Trick Room. In VGC I used Dusclops or Porygon2 but without Eviolite Cresselia is the clear winner right now. I wasn't sure what to do with her so I pumped her up in defense and gave her Calm Mind and Ice Beam for some offense. Moonlight is great because it restores more health in the sun and she has won me games I should have lost. Pulling a 1v4, 1v3 and a 1v2. I've considered taking away Calm Mind and splitting bulk into both Defense and Sp Defense then giving her some additional coverage in Psychic but then she clutches with Calm Mind again so I've been say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Trick Room allows me to play speed control easily. Opponents here just let me use it and I can do things like allow Venusaur to outspeeed Golduck with cloud nine and activate it again the turn I get rid of Golduck to outspeed in Sun again. Also allowing for me to Moonlight or Calm Mind first is also great.

Garchomp @ Choice Band
Ability: Rough Skin
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Dragon Claw
- Poison Jab

Finally the janitor Garchomp. He was thrown on the team to deal with one specific Pokemon, Heatran. I had a Garchomp ready from Singles so I just threw him in here and he has not let me down. Earthquake is easy to use since Venusaur and Torkoal have Protect and Torkoal can even live on at full health. Cresselia has Levitate so she does not care. Outrage is insanely powerful clean up tool that works even better can you can force a 2v1 with this format. Dragon Claw lets me use my STAB without worrying about target RNG. And Poison Jab is just there for Fairies, mainly Togekiss. Choice Band means we have insane power off the bat and I have considered scarf but we seem to out speed everything we need to anyways.